The MBA Student Voice

6 things to keep in mind when you are getting ready for an admissions interview

    I have had an opportunity to meet so many great prospective students in the past several months while interviewing them for admission at UCLA Anderson and I would like to share some advice for future candidates to help them get ready for an upcoming interview.

 1)      Know your resume! You need to know your story well in order to make a good impression. Think about it: when you get to business school, you will be talking to companies and you will have to know your story well.  It’s much more impressive when a candidate knows his or her story without having to refer to a copy of the resume during the conversation.

2)      Treat a skype interview as a face-to face interaction.  Eye contact and strong presentation skills are just as important over Skype as in person, so be sure to look in the camera while you are talking! Avoid having ready answers printed in front of you.  It is very easy for an interviewer to realize that you are reading the answer instead of telling it from the heart. This one thing can quickly make the wrong impression.

3)      The interview normally is about 30 minutes long, and the time flies very quickly.  Remember your goal is to show you are a strong candidate, while the interviewer’s goal is to get to know you. Be mindful of time and aim for 2-3 minutes for an answer to a question, avoid taking up most of your precious interview time discussing too many details in your responses. Use a high level approach describing the situation, your impact and the results. The interviewer will ask follow up questions if something is not quite clear.

4)      Come up with good questions for the interviewer! Show your interest in the school and the person! The worst situation is when the interview went well and then the candidate asks very general questions about the program with answers easily found on the web site or even worse says: “I have no questions”…

5)      Don’t rush to the answer especially if you are taken aback by the question. Take a second to think your answer over and I guarantee you will find a good answer that will demonstrate how awesome you are and what you will bring to the program!

6)      Relax and smile! It is an opportunity for you to talk to somebody who was in your shoes some time ago and who is interested in learning more about you! Smile, be positive and speak about yourself with passion!

Good luck with the interviews!

Stay well,

Alena

 

Year 1 finish line

This week I realized that the first year of MBA is done. Yes, I still have a couple of take-home exams to submit by Wednesday, but the mood is already in the summer mode and the time has come to make conclusions about first year experiences and set the goals for the next year.

In the past couple of months I have met a lot of people thinking about getting an MBA or who were admitted to UCLA Anderson and the most common question I hear is "why did you choose UCLA Anderson" and what were your experiences like?". You can read my reasons to choose the school in my last year post. In terms of the experiences, this year has been awesome and I can't be happier to have chosen UCLA Anderson a year ago and further I will tell you why.

• School name is a very good brand. Whenever I mention I am attending UCLA Anderson, people say it is very good school with strong reputation and community. A lot of companies have very strong relationships with Parker Career Management Center and they hire a lot of Anderson folks. Alumni network is also very strong and supportive: whenever I had any queries about the job in a company, I could always reach out to alums and ask for an informational interview - even top level managers could always find the time for me.
• Community at school is super supportive. Should I have any issue with not understanding a concept in class or personal issue like getting to another part of the city without a car, my classmates are always ready to give a helping hand. It is also true for people several years out of school - I got the mentor from Women Business Connection Club and she has been very helpful to me in terms of advice on my career search and she helped me to get ready for the interviews for my summer internship. This kind of relationship is very valuable and clearly demonstrates the community at school.
• Career services. We all come to school to ultimately find a job or start your own business. This year has been very stressful in terms of the career search but Parker CMC has been my point of contact, my family, my psycological center, my decision-making place and advice center. I am looking forward to helping Parker CMC with the newly admitted class of 2016 in their career search.
• Location. Honestly I don't go to the beach very often but being 1 year in a wonderful climate helped a lot. I became more healthy in terms of food I eat and amount of exercise I do, I have seen a lot in the city and fell in love with it, so I will be interning here in the summer as well.

When someone asked me what I didn't like at UCLA Anderson, I could not come up with something on the spot, but now I know what it is - I don't like that the time here flies by so quickly.

XOXO,

Alena

Half-year MBA point

 I remember speaking to one of the Orientation Leaders back in September about how quickly time flies at Anderson and I didn't believe her words back then. I just realized that today is the last day of February (!) and I feel as if I just came to school literally yeasterday. But in the meantime, so many things happenned during the first half of the year at Anderson. I will highlight the most memorable things in this post.

• The busiest quarter ever. We had 5 core classes and a specific career related class which helped us in the career-related issues: resume and cover letter drafts, networking 101, company research and so many different things.  On top of it, first year students ran for Director positions for different clubs on campus to make the real change and have influence on the process. We bring a lot of changes to school everyday and I was amazed how open the administration is to students' feedback and ideas. Examples include the initiative with The Exchange, which saw life and gets more and more supporters, volunteers and fans every day, and the inclusion of VP of Diversity into the ASA which resulted from Jess Kimball's passion for the community and idea to bring more diversity to UCLA Anderson.

Anderson Exchange is back

In anticipation of my first Thanksgiving in the United States, I would like to write about leadership, initiative and team work at Anderson.

A bunch of my classmates have just started the project "Anderson Exchange" -they put together the first issue of the school's own newspaper. 

 

Actually, the history of this newspaper stretches back to 1970s, but it has been out of sight recently. I was wondering, how this idea of relaunching was born and I asked my friend and editor-in-chief Michael Hirshman about it.

Midterm point crossed

Hello, dear readers!

I can't believe it is November already! I would have never imagined how fast school goes and how many interesting things going on at UCLA Anderson! Last week was the last week of midterms and we survived! As one of my classmates mentioned, after the midterms we can again do 10 things instead of 11:)

Recruiting season has started for everyone, especially for those folks going into Investment management, but everyone is busy doing informational interviews, applying for days on the job and attending various informational sessions on campus.

As for academics, I particularly enjoy our marketing core class which requires a lot of work to do every weekend, but it is very interesting! This weekend every team started to do the field project, which requires visiting several areas in LA, researching the businesses there and making a marketing plan for our own enterprise. This task is time consuming, but I find it particularly useful as we are learning by doing and this is the reason I have chosen UCLA Anderson!

Apart of academics and recruiting, there are a lot of social events going on at school. For instance, our ASA launched a project named Dinners for 8. The idea is to bring together international and domestic students for a dinner where everyone will be able to interact, make friends and know each other better. I have visited 2 of these dinners and found out that we have wonderful cooks in our class!

 I also wanted to add, we have wonderful collaborative community here at Anderson. So, if you are applying or considering to apply, try to come and sit on our classes. We have guests every week and from what I saw, they are very impressed by the school!

MBA Orientation 2015: Thinking in the Next

This week Anderson's Class of 2015 got down to business and began its first MBA course, Leadership Foundations. At the moment, we're only a few days into the class but we're already laying the groundwork for our next two years at b-school and beyond. As its name implies, the course builds on leadership frameworks and uses them to reinforce the Anderson credo, "Think in the Next."

Hey, Summer Bloggers! What has this week taught you about leadership and what it means to "Think in the Next"?

 

Alena Kostenkova: This week's experiences were not easy for me, but who said that they would be? I think I didn't realize how much teamwork means until the Odyssey day of Anderson's Leadership Foundation course. When I was climbing the pole (see below) and fighting with my fear to step up to the top, my team was cheering me on, giving advice and support. Buzz was the one to realize that I am in trouble and he took the initiative of guiding me step by step: he told me where to put my legs, how to help me overcome my fear and finally stand up on this very high pole. Buzz demonstrated the true leadership of giving a hand to a teammate who was struggling: he was calm, patient and very supportive. All of these characteristics will be very helpful in the workplace in the real world.

Another exercise was on teamwork and communication. It was fantastic! You have to go on a 30- to 35-foot high rope with a partner who is going on a second rope parallel to your own. As you can see, you need to be leaning against each other to make it work. Only good teamwork and trust could help you reach the goal!

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Alena and her partner conquering the ropes course. Great job, guys!

 

I am very glad I took this wonderful course. I know that not everything was perfect, but the takeaways and lessons learned are important for future business leaders. Of course, I need to think about this over and over to make some conclusions, but for now, I can say that this expereience helped me become more open to people and more trusting. I will for sure bring all of these takeaways to the workplace as a leader.

Anderson's Class of 2015: The First Day

Together At Last: The Class of 2015 Summer Bloggers

 
Today was a big day. It was the first day on campus for incoming students and the day the Class of 2015 was officially welcomed into the Anderson family. As faculty enthusiastically introduced the program and second-year students started to show us the ropes, all of us who are new to campus got to meet our classmates face-to-face and experience first-hand all of the excitement of the Anderson MBA.

For the next two weeks, your favorite Summer Bloggers will be here to share their unique experiences at Orientation and their first impressions as the newest additions to the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Summer Bloggers, how would you describe your first day at Anderson?

One week before my flight to LA

     Past week was very busy for me as I had to settle down so many important things: a visit to lawyer to organize my life here without me for the following two years, a visit to relatives, parties with friends and last day at work. Someone would choose to stop working earlier, but I decided to stay at my employer till the last moment. It was hard to say good-bye to people with whom I have worked for 6,5 years, but my last working day was very nice with so many good words being said, with so many presents and wishes to achieve my career goals and to have very interesting life at Anderson in the coming years (second photo in the post is from farewell party at my work).

So, I decided to dedicate this post to saying good-bye to Moscow using some pics I have taken lately. I have two goals of uploading the pics in my blog: the first is just to highlight the beauty of Russian capital and the second one is to demonstrate that sometimes we just walk by and don't see the beauty surrounding us. 

I have lived all my life in Russia and got used to pass by Pushkin monument every day on my way to work without paying attention to it. It is a funny thing, but last week when I was in a hurry for my work I noticed a group of tourists in the metro station Mayakovskaya where my office is located. All these tourists were looking up and making photos and I also stopped to see what they were just looking at. You''ll see below the photos of mosaics on the ceilings of the station which I have never paid attention to. Probably my soon departure from Moscow made me care for the beauty of my own city, probably it was just a coincidence, but I looked up and then every single day I made photos of different places and monuments just to have them with me in Los Angeles. See below some of these pics to feel the spirit of Moscow:)

 

My reasons to choose UCLA Anderson

    A question "what school to attend" comes to a great number of accepted applicants and the answer is always specific to your particular goals. See below my reasons for attending Anderson this fall and some thoughts and things to consider when you have to make a decision.

    1. Rankings. A lot of people consider school's placement in different rankings and I was also the one who googled Full time MBA rankings before I made my decision, so I could understand the inclination to just go with TOP-5 or TOP-10 school and be just fine. But then I made a consideration of other factors (that I will mention below) and decided just for myself that rankings is just one factor and not the decisive one. I even compared it with GMAT score during application process - it is good if it is withtin school's 80% range and is balanced, but not "the make or break". So, with ratings I decided that a school within TOP -20 in the US will be this "80% range" and I never turned to rankings again.

    2. Employment report or companies that recruit on campus.  I have talked to dozens of alums from different schools and the majority of them said to look closely to the employment reports first. The closer the school year is, the better I realize how right they were. For instance, if you dream to work for company X, you should look at the # of graduates and interns this company hired from the latest intake in the school. I made a close look at Anderson employment report, considered trends within several years and came to 2 conclusions:

• Tech companies have very good presence at Anderson and they hire about 1/5th of the class and as I look closely on technology sector, this school is very much for me!
• Anderson class is very diverse in terms of career paths people choose. There is no dominant industry and I like this fact from the learning environment point of view.

You are admitted! What's next?

        Everyone in the application process wants to get the admission letter, waits for it and counts the days till the decision date when he/she is done with apps and interviews. So, even if you are at the beginning of the application process right now, you can still be curious to unfold the veil of secrecy and look into the future period between getting the admission letter and enrolling in the program.

               First of all, you will be very happy and will celebrate the admission with your friends and family the week or two following your admission. Make sure to thank all the people who helped and supported you during the application process! (and at this moment you realize that the number of people is huge and it really takes you some time to count everyone and shoot a message/make a call to everyody).

               Secondly, when the euphoria comes down, you are beginning to realize what has happened and you begin to plan further steps. The question "how will I finance my studies?" arises immediately and you start to blame yourself for having saved that little! A close look at financing options brings you to the Earth; the Financial Aid office is eager to answer all your questions about financing your degree.

          Then you join Facebook group of your class, ask questions, get to know your future classmates. At the beginning of April you are invited to visit A-days at Anderson to feel the sense of community, explore the housing options and make sure the program is right for you! Unfortunately, I was not able to make it to A-days myself, but my classmates who were told me that these 3 days were marvelous: the organization was perfect, people were super friendly and supportive and the majority of questions was solved. I even noticed that several people have found a roommate from the class during A-days, and I regret not going to LA in April.