The MBA Student Voice

A-Days II is coming up!

One of the best and most stressful things about getting an MBA is trying to manage multiple lives: academic, extra-curricular, and social.  While spring break was a great time to focus on the social aspects of getting an MBA (Mexico is great, by the way!), this first week back has been a pleasant reminder of the other reasons I'm here.  Classes are great, and I get to meet with my new study group tomorrow, but most of my time this week is going to be spent getting ready for A-Days II.

Anderson Days gives new admits for the class of 2011 a chance to visit campus, meet current students, and see a bit of what Anderson is all about.  I'm helping to organize a bunch of the social events, which has been a great opportunity to think about what activities we have that are unique to southern California.  From football and volleyball on the beach to hiking in the Pacific Palisades to biking through Santa Monica and Venice, we have tons of fun activities to help us unwind.  Of course, I only get to do those activities after I've done my work... so off to read that strategy case!

Spring Break!

We made it through finals! One benefit of the quarter system is that you breaks are homework free. Today all of the first-year students took the final for the operations class that is a required part of the core curriculum (we'll be sad to longer have class with Professor Roels!). On Tuesday we took the marketing final and Monday was all about finance. Next quarter the required core classes are down to two (HR and strategy), which leaves room to start taking electives.

Here's to spring break! I'm heading to Mexico with a few folks from Section E. It will be a much-needed vacation!

John

I really should be studying right now

Ah yes, it's that wonderful time of the quarter ... finals week. Next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I'll be at school barely after the sun rises to spend 2-3 hours trying to remember and regurgitate all the cool stuff my profs have been teaching me for the last 2 1/2 months. Overall, finals at Anderson seem pretty fair (based on my one week of experience). None of them last quarter seemed grotesquely difficult or easy and were fair representations of what we learned. That said, it's always hard to synthesize data and focus for that short time period.

But actually, the hardest thing to do is to stop procrastinating and get down to studying! This morning I have been trying to go through my 650 pages of Operations PPT slides (as a side note, the profs here make ridiculously impressive Powerpoint presentations for class ... email me if you want to see some and I'll get back to you with an example), but I keep distracting myself. First it's March Madness, then it's my academic internship (for a boutique consulting firm in Sherman Oaks), then it's reading emails, then the weather ... I'm sure you know how this is. 

What usually brings me back and into focus is the fact that I love what I study here. For me, the most amazing thing about business school is the opportunity to learn applicable and fascinating things (with cool people and from talented profs). So, as soon as I start reading about the newsvendor model, I think I should be ok for a few hours ... until I drift to ESPN.com for a few minutes or get hungry.

Top Corporate Citizens Recruit at UCLA Anderson

Forbes.com published their annual rankings of the The 100 Best Corporate Citizens this week.  Due to my personal interest in sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), I am always interested in these types of rankings.  I was also happy to see that many of the companies at the top of this ranking actively recruit at UCLA Anderson.  This includes General Mills, HP, Cisco, Mattel, Abbott, and Intel, among many others.  It is wonderful to see that companies that are "doing well" are also "doing good" and that Anderson students have a chance to be part of this.  I will be interning at Mattel this summer so I am really looking forward to seeing how corporate responsibility is incorporated into their business model.

--Cheryl  

Volkswagen CEO Speaks at Anderson

Today the CEO of Volkswagen spoke at UCLA Anderson about the automotive industry and the future of sustainable mobility (besides the VW badge, the company also owns Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, and Bugatti). The bottom line? Alternative-fuel vehicles have made huge progress but we can expect the gasoline engine to dominate the American market for at least the next 15 years.

Car buffs have a several options at Anderson. The Automotive Business Association is a great starting point as the club helps students connect with the industry and take advantage of the car companies in LA area (Toyota, Honda, and Nissan, to name three).

John Rankin

Section E Social Events!

As one of the social chairs for Section E, I've had the opportunity to plan some fun events for our section.  Each section has two social chairs that plan section events, in addition to the many MANY events that are going on each week.  We have had a bowling night, trivia night at the local bar, vodka taste test with one of our favorite professors, a night at a Clippers game, and several others.  We have some additional fun things in the works for spring quarter, including karaoke and a night at Dodgers stadium.

There are also countless school-wide events every week.  As posters have mentioned previously we have "Lit Club" every Wednesday night at a different bar, where our "librarians" conduct a short reading/presentation.  Every thursday afternoon after class we also have Anderson Afternoon, with beer, wine, food, and some great themes!  We also have an annual Halloween party, Casino Night for Challenge for Charity, and a formal in the spring.  Beyond that, there are too many other social events for a blog post!  If you choose to join us at Anderson, there will be no shortage of fun activities for you to participate in!

--Cheryl

Entrepreneurship is alive and well!

Entrepreneurship is thriving at Anderson!  For the past quarter, I've had parallel experiences: working to develop a business plan with some of my classmates while also volunteering as a mentor for Project ECHO, a business plan competition for high school students.

The competition for ECHO was two weekends ago, and I was thoroughly impressed with how far my high school mentees had come.  At the same time, when my team presented our plan to our business plan development class yesterday I was pretty impressed with how far we'd come, too.  We presented to our professor and a couple VC guys who gave great feedback, but the best part was looking back at our first drafts and realizing how far we'd come.  Now we're getting ready for the Knapp competition... wish us luck!

- Kate

Case competition!

Case competitions are an exciting part of the MBA experience. You form a team with a few of your peers and spend an intense few days creating a presentation to describe your strategy for the business problem at hand. Winning teams take home the prize money, exposure to judges who may be senior executives or business leaders, and sometimes even an interview from the company that hosted the competition.

This year UCLA Anderson will host a case competition based on the upcoming book from Jim Stengel, the former Global Marketing Officer of Proctor & Gamble (ever heard of brands like Tide, Crest, Gillette, and Duracell?). The student teams will receive background info on Jim and the ideas for his upcoming book, to be titled "Packaged Good." Looking for more than just a marketing plan, Jim Stengel and his publisher want diverse teams of students to help him reshape the way businesses approach marketing. The case competition, hosted by the Marketing Association with help from the Anderson marketing faculty, will provide students with an opportunity to test their marketing mettle and will provide Jim and his team with ideas to market his upcoming book.

John Rankin

Case competitions

Anderson is becoming more and more well-known for its strategy education, and part of the reason for that is all the extracurricular opportunities there are in that area. I will write about several of these in the future, but today I'd like to tell you about one of the many case competitions Anderson is involved in: the Net Impact Case Competition.

Last weekend, five of my classmates and I participated in that competition. The way that most case competitions work is that a team of students are given a client and a problem that client is facing. They are then given either several hours, several days, or several weeks (depending on the competition) to find as comprehensive and feasible a solution as possible.

In the Net Impact Case Competition, I teamed with Leaat Dulberg, Anuradha Kumar, Madeline Dewey, Teddy Ho and Sam Kang in establishing a growth strategy for Project GRAD. At the competition, we presented a 20-slide Powerpoint deck to a group of 12 industry judges, with a 10-minute limit (which, after 150 hours of research over 10 days, was probably the most challenging constraint).

For an aspiring consultant such as myself, it was an amazing learning experience and a ton of fun to get to work with an actual client, solving a real problem they have. On top of that, it was extremely satisfying to help a nonprofit. And even more fun was the fact that we won the competition. :)

For more from the Daily Bruin, click here.

Entrepreneurship Week...ALOUD

Last week was E-Week here at Anderson and it was pretty awesome.  It gave Anderson students an opportunity to attend several focused entrpreneurial events as well as network and mesh ideas with students from UCLA's other graduate schools.  Kelly Perdew winner of The Apprentice Season 2 and serial entrepreneur delivered the keynote and details on his recent ventures, most notably his position as CEO at Rotohog.  

During the past week, I also had the opportunity to hear Mohammed El-Erian, CEO of PIMCO, speak at the Aloud forum in the downtown Los Angeles library.  It was insightful to hear his perspective on the current markets and the four vaccums that are currently sucking the air out of the US economy:

1) Housing Turning in Summer '06

2) Financial Markets Crisis

3) Locked Credit Markets

4) A Truly Global Economy, Dependence on Other Countries

-Mike