The MBA Student Voice

Why Anderson? (Part 1)

It looks like Piyush and I are either on the same wavelength.  That or we are both incoming students excited about Anderson!  Anyway, let me get started.  After the long grueling b-school application/interview process, I was fortunate enough to have been accepted to a few of the top schools in the country, including Anderson.  Having poured almost every ounce of my energy over the past two yar into the GMAT, applications, essays, and interview prep, I felt so relieved to know that I would be attending b-school at one of my top choices.  However, I didn’t realize how much effort it would take to decide which one of these school I wanted to attend.

Once I had heard back from all the programs I applied to, I revisted all the research I had done when deciding to apply to these schools.  I made pros and cons lists, read more blogs, visited websites, and spent countless hours discussing my options with my wife.  I was torn.  One day I would feel good about one school.  Then the next day it would be another.  I knew I needed a better understanding of what life as a student would be like at each one of these programs, and I knew I wouldn't be able to get a complete feel of that just by visiting school websites.  I began contacting as many current students as I could.  After talking to a couple students from each school, I was still feeling torn.  However, as time went on, and the more students I talked to, the clearer it became that Anderson was the place for me.

Why UCLA Anderson?

Like most B-school applicants, I applied to a bunch of schools and was very fortunate to choose between top business schools both in US and India. Anderson became one of my top choices as I learnt about the school through current students, alumni, forums, admission chats and the school website.

As an international student, I was unable to visit the school but I recommend all prospective applicants to invest in this exercise. You not only experience the school's culture but also strengthen your application.

I still remember the email and phone call I received from the Anderson admissions team. I struggled to open my application on the tiny iPhone screen and read the admission offer letter multiple times before breaking the news to my friends and family.

Why UCLA Anderson?
For me, UCLA is an awesome school with a global brand and which will give me a solid general management education, not to mention its in southern California so the lifestyle and weather is outstanding. It attracts a broad array of industries in recruiting including top consulting and Fortune 500 firms.

India vs USA
You really can’t compare Indian business schools to schools in United States. The schools are catering to different markets. It’s like comparing apples to mangoes. Since I had to decide between the two countries, I did my due-diligence. India scores more on the economy growth front, job placements numbers, and cost. But, US schools such as Anderson stand out for job readiness, leadership, exposure, diversity and experience.

 

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.

Leadership Opportunities at UCLA Anderson

The UCLA Anderson community is made up of a truly diverse group of students and faculty. But if there's one thing we all have in common, it's that we're here to lead. Leadership is central to almost every course offered on campus, and it's something we've all reflected on in our application essays and interviews. However, leadership isn't just talked about, it's put into action through countless opportunities with student-led clubs and school events.

2014 ASA President, Brian Schoelkopf

What's great is that these opportunities aren't limited to upperclassmen. For example, take my first-year classmate, Brian Schoelkopf. Recently, he was elected President of the Anderson Student Association (ASA). From this spring, he and 12 other first-year students will serve on the ASA Cabinet and become the voice of Anderson's entire student body - before reaching their second year on campus! These types of opportunities extend to professional clubs like High Tech Business Association and Management Consulting Association, identity clubs like African American Students in Management and Out@Anderson, and interest clubs like Wine Club and Anderson Eats.

Although the new ASA Cabinet was elected earlier this month, the majority of leadership opportunities begin from the first days on campus. Student-led clubs all elect first-year students to serve as Directors of important functional areas like Finance, Marketing and - most importantly! - Social. These roles allow you to make an immediate impact on campus, connect with your second-year classmates, and are a great way to try out new areas of interest. They're also tried-and-true fodder for summer internship interviews.

With 100s of opportunities to get involved and LEAD as a first-year student, anyone with an interest and a can-do spirit can gain leadership experience and help establish Anderson's next generation of business leaders.

 

Daniel Genter, MBA '15 - Follow UCLA Anderson on Twitter.

Looking to Career Switch? An Interesting Graphic from Parker CMC

The Parker Career Management Center posted this interesting graphic today that I thought would be worth sharing with the MBA Student Voice readers. 

As you can see, there's a lot of career transition between industries - which is one reason why many people choose to get an MBA. What isn't highlighted in the graphic is that, for the people who stay within the same industry, a lot of them are moving to a different sector or part of the value chain. For example, some people in the technology industry might transition from a hardware company doing corporate finance to a software company doing marketing. 

This graphic also highlights the career diversity at Anderson, both pre and post graduation. That diversity is one unique strength of the program, and enables students to tap into incredible networks as they figure out their career. 

Anyways - that's all I've got! Just thought the graphic would be an interesting data point for people considering getting their MBA in general and at Anderson. 

Until next time, 

~Kyle Forrest, follow me on Twitter and follow UCLAMBA

 

New Anderson Family

    After I got admitted I was wondering what would happen next, how I would make a transition into business school and how I would manage to get to know my future classmates while I was more than 6000 miles away from school. Everything turned out to be quite easy and I was amazed by the speed I virtually met my future classmates: once I joined Facebook group, it all began! The group is very active, there are so many topics to discuss and people are ready to answer questions and give advice. But today I want to tell about a small group of us who met on the Facebook Anderson Class of 2015 page and decided to take part in Nike+ Women's Marathon in San Francisco. 

      As for me, I have never run half/marathons before and I just decided to try a half when I saw on our Facebook group that several girls plan to participate. I think it was very right thing to do as now I have wonderful party of like-minded classmates who became my first Anderson family and I hope will become close friends in the turn of my MBA journey. At least now we have our e-mail thread and refer to each other for help, advice or with some questions regarding different parts of enrollment process. It is very important for me as an international student as I leave my family and friends behind and It is very cool that I had an opportunity to find such warm attitude from my new Anderson family. So, Dear readers, meet my wonderful friends!

The UCLA Anderson MBA advantage for careers in high-tech

We usually decide to invest in an MBA with a specific short-term and a more abstract long-term goal - and not just because we have to write that essay convincingly, but also because an MBA is not just another degree but a life decision. Some of us have crazy goals, but thats ok, as long as you think an MBA is one dot you really need to connect to get there. This post is for those who, like me, are targetting a product management/marketing role (or other similar ones) in the high-tech industry.

While researching for MBA programs that'll give me the necessary training - both in terms of academicand experiential- to gear up to move to a product management role in the short-term, I realized that not all programs were a good match for me. Most of the popular programs, especially on the east coast, had a subtle bias towards careers in finance, consulting and general management. This can be observed by studying not only the incoming student backgrounds but also the post-MBA employment stats. In many cases though, this is not a consequence of the way the program is designed, but more a consequence of the career asiprations of its students which largely dictates the focus of their campus placement teams. I tried getting in touch with current students from several schools during my research and found a standard response  - product management/marketing in the high-tech industry is a niche career choice, and is not very common. While on the one hand I was sure that this fact will not deter me as long as choose the right courses and build the right network, on the other hand I was apprehensive of getting enough experiential opportunities and peer support while in school.

In that respect, the UCLA Anderson MBA program was on one of the rare ones that perfectly aligned with my career goals. A quick look at the class profile told me that 20% of students come from engineering/high-tech backgrounds and this caught my attention. On exploring further and finding out that 21% of students choose careers in the high-tech industry (class of 2012), I immediately knew that this is a popular career choice here. Why this difference, one might wonder. Some factors that can explain this are its location, the coursework, and the experiential opportunities - all amplified by years of experience of the faculty and career services working with students targetting the high-tech industry. Academically, the Easton Technology leadership program provides the ideal recipe of courses to prepare even students from non-tech backgrounds for high-tech careers. Applied Management Research (AMR) projects with the high-tech industry are also fairly common and come in handy to get some valuable experience while being creative (check out this year's Youtube AMR project). A healthy network of alumni in the industry in and around LA and SF definitely helps a great deal in both career advice and job search. The Days on the Jobs (DOJs) to the Silicon Valley and bay area (sponsored by HTBA) are good opportunities to builld your network and at the same time, get a sneek-preview of the culture of the companies you visit. (For in-depth employment details for the class of 2011, look at the Employment Report)

These were some of the critical factors that influenced my choice of the Anderson MBA program and assured me that I'll be able to transition smoothly from a software engineer to a product manager. I'm also glad that apart from finance, consulting and technology, Anderson also maintains a stronghold on several other areas such as enterprenuership and real estate, thus giving the students ample choice to shape their learning and post-MBA careers. My classmates are coming from amazingly diverse backgrounds and are targetting an equally diverse set of career roles - right from media and healthcare to non-profit and real estate, apart from the more traditional areas of finance, consulting and general management. For more information on the career paths the Anderson MBA can open up for you, take a look at the brochure!

~Ayushman Jain, MBA '14 (Twitter @ayushman_jain)

Recruiting, Races, Amazing Weather: Winter Quarter at UCLA Anderson!

It's hard to believe winter quarter is already halfway done! If I thought that things were going to slow down a bit after the craziness of Fall (full disclosure: I did.), well, I was wrong! But, at the risk of sounding like a broken record in all my posts, I am still loving all of it.

Where to begin: it's been a crazy quarter, full of RECRUITING and schoolwork and RECRUITING and wedding planning and Marathons and RECRUITING. That's right, first-years are allowed to attend company presentations and network in the Fall, but companies can't actually solicit applications from us until the Winter. So they do! Before we were even back to class, I was in Seattle for the great Days on the Job event put on by the High Tech Business Association (HTBA), visiting the offices of Amazon, Microsoft, Expedia, and T-Mobile. Resumes and cover letters were due en masse all throughout January, and interviews are still being conducted as I type. I have been lucky enough to interview with some truly excellent companies; a sampling of them includes:

Awesome companies that came to UCLA Anderson to recruit it's even awesomer students!

The process has treated me well with all my hard work this Fall and Winter paying off in the form of second round interviews and even an offer so far. You'll have to stay tuned to this blog to find out where I decide to spend my summer! But I do want to offer faith for those career and function switchers out there: if I can go from being a real estate developer to a product manager at a top-tier technology firm, anyone can do it!

In between recruiting I have managed to squeeze in two big races, qualifying for the 2012 New York City Marathon by running a 1:35 at the 13.1 Los Angeles Half Marathon in January, and qualifying for the 2013 Boston Marathon by running a 3:32 at the Huntington Beach Marathon last weekend. I bring this up here because I was talking to a prospective member of the class of 2014 over coffee the other day, and he told me he had heard that there isn't time for exercise because you are so busy in school. Well, he obviously asked the right (wrong??) person, because I set him straight. Continuing to run during all the insanity has kept me centered and provided me with some coveted "me time." In addition, I'm exploiting the fact that we don't have to look neat and polished like in a work setting at school, as I will go running around campus at lunch and then return just in time for class. This might explain why no one ever sits next to me, but hey, at least I'm staying sane. (Just kidding, I do have friends - honest!- and with SoCal's dry weather, I sweat about 1/16th as much as I did in humid Florida.)

This begs the question, was it me... or was it those amazing pink socks???

I should clarify that I did not photoshop myself into a beautiful beach background in the above photo, this is actually what I ran along for 26.2 miles. Yeah, it's pretty nice here. The weather has been downright amazing for the last two months. Temperatures hover around 78 degrees every day, the sun is shining, the air has a light breeze, people are wearing shorts- I feel like I need to pinch myself to be sure it's really January and February. Having experienced the fantastic weather out here, I think YOU would have to pay ME to go to business school in New England at this point! 

Why UCLA Anderson Is a Great Choice For B-school IMHO

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone had a wonderful day spent with family and friends. I know for us students, it was a welcome day off from studying as we approach finals. There are only two weeks left in the now-infamous first quarter of b-school (I say “now”—I think it was always infamous, I just didn’t really understand until I lived through it myself!), and I will admit to being incredibly ready for the holiday! That said, business school so far has been an amazing experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything. And one quarter into it, I can also safely say that I wouldn’t trade UCLA Anderson for any other business school either.

Another satisfied student votes Anderson!

It’s a tough question- there are many amazing business schools to choose from, how do you know which one is best for you? Complicating things is when you get your heart set on a school and for whatever reason are not able to attend (and by whatever reason, I mean you don’t get in). I've been blogging on this site for awhile, and with luck I've built up a bit of street cred amongst our readers. So I hope you'll trust me when I say that I encourage you to consider UCLA Anderson as seriously as you would any other school, and I include the Top 3 in that as well. Why? Where do I begin…

1)      The quality of people. Every day, every hour, I am amazed, surprised, and delighted by the sheer intellect, ambition, savvy, wisdom, goal-orientation, creativity, and overall high caliber of each of my fellow students, first and second year alike. This is truly a top notch institution to have attracted such amazing talent. There is no doubt in my mind that many people I walk the halls of Anderson with today are going to be tomorrow’s Fortune 50 CEO’s, start-up darlings, and revolutionaries in the non-profit space. It's just an added bonus that everyone is also friendly & helpful, normal (loosely defined), and quite often, hilarious. (At least in Section B, the most awesome section there ever was.)

What was that about “quality of people”??

Remembering What’s Important Before the Craziness of B-school at UCLA Begins!

I’ve looked at a few MBA blogs that offer advice on how to spend your summer prior to starting business school. I have definitely cherry picked what tips I have chosen to follow (for example, even though I got “Tried By War – Abraham Lincoln As Commander-in-Chief” by James McPherson, and it looks fascinating, I’m just not sure reading it is going to happen), and added ones of my own (combing through my parent’s attic in search of hiking gear from 9th grade in preparation for my Pre-O trip to Yosemite. More on these pre-orientation trips offered by Anderson another time!). But one that I am making a point to truly take to heart is to spend as much time with my family and friends as possible.

One of the more entertaining if not exactly stress-free ways I did this was to head to my hometown of Atlanta for a week of wedding planning. I spent some “quality time” with my mother and two sisters as we tore all over town to various dress boutiques, potential reception venues, and meetings at the church. But we created some priceless memories.

One afternoon that I will never forget, and will remind myself of when I'm feeling crazed at school this Fall, is when I dragged my mom and four bridesmaids (my sisters and my two best friends) to give the stamp of approval on the wedding dress I picked out, and to look for outfits of their own.  We had so much fun, trying on absurd, color-saturated, pink, poufy bridesmaids dresses (if you’ve been to just about any wedding, you know what I’m talking about) and laughing till tears rolled down our cheeks.  When was the last time the seven of us, old friends all, had been in the same room? Priceless! And for anyone who is curious, here’s the dress I finally settled on. I figured, pretty but practical.

 

I was also lucky enough to get to spend a full week at the beach with my immediate family. None of us could remember the last time we’d all managed to get that much time off of work, much less simultaneously. A one-story beach bungalow turned out to be enough space for all six of us as the fun (grilling s’mores, watching the 4th of July fireworks over the water, and boogie boarding) far outweighed any familial-induced claustrophobia. It was extra special when my Grandma and Aunt (who lives in Juneau, AK!) joined us for a day. Here’s a photo of the three generations (L to R: Dad, Sisters, Grandma, me & future hubby, Aunt):

Both of these are just two examples of why family and friends are so important, and why I am making a point of trying to soak up as much of them as possible before school begins. But there’s never enough time in the day, and I already feel like I am running out of daylight with my great friends here in Florida. This is where I comfort myself that in the age of Facebook and Gmail, 3,000 miles isn’t nearly as far as it used to be.

-Charlotte Baxter