The MBA Student Voice

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Out of sight, out of mind? Not so much. A week after we officially finished our first year of business school, I'm already missing it. I miss my amazing classmates, the fascinating classes, my awesome profs, and just the general sense of camaraderie and community that pervades the daily experience at Anderson.

Now ... am I glad to have a few months off from homework? Yeah, I admit I am. I am also excited about my summer internship, a strategy project for Princess Cruises. This was a tough year for recruiting -- not just at Anderson or at business schools in general, but everywhere in this economy. But as a testament to our Parker Career Management office, quite a few of us have found excellent jobs this summer. In fact, I owe my own internship largely to Parker, since one of the counselors, Jennifer Bevan, is the person who made me aware of this opening. She and Amanda Durrant, another of Parker's spectacular counselors, coached me on my resume, my interview answers, and general job-search strategies for most of this year. I owe them quite a bit!

Despite my exciting internship opportunity (which starts tomorrow!), I will certainly miss Anderson over the summer. I'm just glad that I have one more year left, more time to soak in the education and friendship thaty the school is afffording me.

I look forward to meeting many of you this fall. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about Anderson or about b-school in general.

Trip to wine country

Having worked in the wine industry before coming to business school, I definitely had the chance to taste a lot of wines and visit a lot of wine regions. One of my favorites, the Santa Ynez Valley, just happens to be 90 minutes away from the UCLA campus.

I took a day trip up there with some family last weekend (pic here). We went to five wineries: Brander, Epiphany, Qupe, Fess Parker and Foxen. Qupe is always a favorite of mine -- we poured a lot of their wine at the restaurant I used to manage outside Chicago. The great thing about taking a wine-tasting trip to Santa Barbara is that you don't really have to like wine in order to get a lot out of it. The terrain is stunning up there, so it's a great way to get away from the city and see some natural beauty. And what's even more amazing is that just an hour southeast of SB, you can see snow!

This is just one off the million ways to have fun while you're at Anderson! 

Decisions decisions ...

This is the time of year where some of you are having to make some tough decisions. Maybe you got into your top two choices and you have to choose between those. Maybe you are being offered a significant scholarship from a lesser school but you also got into your "reach" school. Or maybe you're deciding whether to go to b-school at all. A legitimate question, given the economy we're in.

I was faced with this decision last year as well. My memories of the period are intense -- it was a stressful time for me; I was fortunate enough to have a choice between three great options. 

I was deciding between three schools. Let's just call them A, B and C. A and B were my co-top choices; similar academic reputation, both in great locations in major metropolitan areas, phenomenal faculty at each. C was one of my backup schools, but had given me a very generous scholarship offer (significantly more than either A or B offered me).

The first thing I did was eliminate C. Even though it is also a very strong school, I knew from the outset that I wasn't in this to save money. The difference in 2 years of tuition would be dwarved by the difference in the experience I would have; and even if you want to get picky about the numbers, then the increase in expected salary upon graduation makes up for the difference, anyway. I have never regretted this decision.

The much more difficult choice was between A & B. In situations like this, I usually like to trust my "gut" -- and so I visited each school and really tried to channel my instincts. But even my instincts were undecided. Both schools felt good.

How did I end up choosing A(nderson)? The people. The students. Having visited a number of b-schools and knowing people from a handful of others, I feel confident saying that this school has the most outstanding student body of any in the country. In my class of 375, there are people representing every continent (ok, not Antarctica, but I'd stake something large on the fact that someone in my class has spent time there), every type of work background, dozens of races and cultures, dozens of mindsets and perspectives, many dozens of industries and job functions ... to call this a "network" is a vast understatement. To call it a "family" is a little gushy, but still an understatement. You know that trust game where you fall backwards and trust that your coworker will catch you? I'd jump off the Anderson roof and know someone would catch me. Ultimately, the students here are in it as a team, and that manifests itself everywhere from the classroom to recruiting to the bars, after-hours.

If you have a tough decision on your plate, just remember that you're going to b-school to get a job, sure, but that you're choosing a culture, too. If this sounds like the type of place where you want to spend two years of your life, Anderson is the right choice.

Anderson Strategy Group

I've mentioned in at least one previous post that Anderson is putting a lot of effort into improving its strategy program. This is occuring not only on an administrative level (on the part of faculty) but also among the student body.

This year, a second-year MBA student founded the Anderson Strategy Group, an in-house consulting firm run entirely by students. I'm one of the "managers" for the group, which means that I (will be) lead(ing) 4-6 person project teams. All of our work is pro-bono, and our goal is to give students a chance to hone their strategy skills on real cases for Anderson, UCLA, Los Angeles non-profits, and even some for-profit businesses owned by Anderson grads.

Several other top-10 business schools have similar clubs. It's important to us to get Anderson students on more invite lists for consulting firms and landing more offers, and we think this is a great way to get there. By the time you are here next year, ASG will be in full swing and you will have a chance to be a part of it!

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.

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.

The busy season

One thing we can't deny is part of the Anderson experience: being busy. We are constantly busy around here, and for most of us, that is a good thing. There is seemingly no end to the number of activities (school-related or not) available to take up our time. We thought our schedules were as busy as they could possibly be in the fall -- with our five core classes, daily recruiting visits from Fortune 500 companies, club events (ranging from the wine club to soccer to seminars to visiting speakers).

But now we are in the winter quarter (2/3 done, actually) and somehow things have gotten even busier. Primarily, this is because of the on-campus recruiting season, an exciting but challenging part of the first-year Anderson experience. A secondary reason is the fact that our classes have taken a step further and become more analytic, requiring us to take some of the tools we learned first quarter and apply them further to real-world business situations. This is one of the greatest parts of the academic experience here at Anderson -- we are given a solid foundation and then taught to use it effectively. Balance is key, and it's fun to learn this way. A third reason is that a lot of the extracurricular activities, such as case competitions, are in full swing. Some of us are even doing mid-year academic internships.

I said at the beginning of this post that being busy, for most of us, is a good thing. Hopefully you are someone who is interested in business school, and specifically Anderson, because you want an intense and enjoyable two-year learning experience. Anderson isn't a two-year vacation; we work hard and have full schedules. Given the quality of the activities that fill our time, being busy is something we relish.

Greetings from LA!

Hello future Anderson students! My name is Joe Ziomek, and I am currently a first-year MBA student here. I'll be blogging about my experiences over the next few months, and hope to be able to shed some light on the Anderson experience for you. Please, if you ever have any questions or comments, feel free to email me at any time.

A little about my background: I'm from the Chicago area and have spent most of my life there, with a few notable exceptions. First and foremost, I spent two years living in France, doing a study abroad program in Paris and then teaching English in a public middle school in a village of 5,000 people. While living in France, I became very passionate about food and wine, and decided to get into the restaurant business when I returned to the US. Over the next five years I worked my way up from busboy to general manager, with a six-month break in the middle to work a harvest at a winery in Napa called Mayacamas Vineyards.

Like many people who end up in business school, I loved managing -- but I knew I could do it better, given the proper training. I started the b-school search in the fall of 2007, and it was pretty much "love at first sight" when I came to visit Anderson. I'd already done a good amount of research into the well-rounded curriculum, the experienced faculty, and the strong capabilities of the career services offices. But what really set Anderson apart from the other schools I was considering was the incredibly collaborative, brilliant and yet very down-to-earth student body. The admissions office does a great job of putting together a diverse class of talented, motivated, intelligent and creative people from all walks of life and from all over the globe. 

About a year later, here I am, working my way through a challenging yet enjoyable Year One of the Anderson MBA experience, alongside 370 fantastic classmates.

Over the next few months, I'll blog about a variety of Anderson- and LA-related topics, including some information about the classes, the culture, the people, the activities, the resources, and maybe we'll even chat about jobs and the economy. Again, please email with questions at any time.