The MBA Student Voice

#WhyAnderson

To continue on my previous post, I'd like to share with all of you a couple of the reasons why I chose to apply and ultimately decide to attend Anderson.

Location

 

An important question to ask yourself when you're applying is: Where do you want to live upon graduating and what industries interest you? Most MBA schools post employment statistics online (see Anderson's latest one here), and the majority of students start jobs in the same region of their school. It also makes recruiting much easier logistically if you are in the same region as the companies or industries you're interested in. For me, I ultimately want to stay in California and am interested in strategy/biz dev in tech or consumer products. LA has a burgeoning tech and entrepreneurial industry (e.g., Silicon Beach, SurfAir, Snapchat), Silicon Valley is only a 1 hr plane ride away, and many companies have their headquarters or an office in LA (e.g., Pressed Juicery, Disney, Mattel, and most consulting firms) which makes it a great fit for my career ambitions. Obviously the weather doesn't hurt either ;).

 

Parker Career Center

 

Most people go back to business school to switch careers and/or gain additional business skills to further their career. I am no exception, and needed to know I would have a strong career services team supporting me. During the entire admissions process, I was strongly impressed by Anderson's Parker Career Center. When you hear Director of Career Services' Regina Regazzi and her team share their experiences, you can tell they have a lot of passion and energy for supporting students during the entire recruiting process. Students told Bloomberg/Businessweek they would give Parker an A+. School hasn't even started yet and already we have Parker deliverables to help us prepare for recruiting and I'm even attending a Parker-hosted Q&A event in San Francisco this week!

 

Culture

 

Culture is a big buzz word and can oftentimes be used very liberally, but you really can't overlook the importance of choosing a school that fits you, and only you can make that determination. While I haven't officially arrived on campus yet, through the interview, Admit Preview Day, A-Days, unofficial Happy Hours, class of 2017 Slack group, and the cohort of Anderson women I met at the Women's Forte MBA Conference the vibe has been that of a collaborative family - just like what they said during recruiting events =]! Everybody has been so willing to connect me to someone in their network who can help answer questions I have. Also, with a relatively small class size of approximately, I don't feel like I'm just one fish in the big ocean and I'll be able to meet most if not everybody in my class.

 

 

Here's a picture from a happy hour for SF Bay Area people attending Anderson in the fall!

Quick Intro + Admissions Tip

Hey prospective MBA students! It was just a year ago that I was in the same boat as you - considering an MBA, researching schools, and tackling the GMAT. Fast forward to today and I can’t believe I've just quit my job and will be starting at UCLA in just 2 months. Ever since I received the admit call, it’s been a whirlwind of emails and events, and school hasn’t even started yet! 

But first, a quick into on myself. My name is Jennifer Wu and I’ll be one of the student bloggers for the class of 2017. I was born in the Bay Area, did undergrad at Berkeley, and then worked for the past 4.5 years in San Francisco with the accounting firm KPMG. Like many of my fellow classmates, I decided to go back to business school to do a career switch and felt like business school was the best avenue to make that transition without having to start at the bottom of the corporate ladder again. 

Although the application process can be very stressful since you're juggling a full-time job, GMAT prep, writing essays, and getting antsy while reading the GMATClub forums, remember to take a step back to remind yourself why you're putting yourself though this process. It's painful, but afterwards I realized the whole process really allowed me to learn a lot about myself, visualize my long-term career goals, and (roughly) outline a plan to action. I also learned that it's okay to constantly pivot, and even to expect that. As someone wise once said, it's not always the end process, but the journey and process, that matters.

Once you've decided MBA is the path for you, picking the right school is a very crucial decision, so I'll be sharing more of why I chose Anderson in my next post! In the meantime, because a picture says a thousand words, I found the UCLA Flickr page super helpful to show me what my next 2 years could be looking like!