Columbia Business School « Master Admissions

April 9, 2012

How to Make the Most of Your MBA: A Primer for Entrepreneurs-to-Be

Filed under: Application ideas,Inspiration — Tags: Alison Albeck Lindland, business school, career change, careers, Columbia Business School, entrepreneurship, leadership, MBA, networking, venture capital — admin @ 3:12 pm

This week's tips come courtesy of Alison Albeck Lindland, a fellow Vassar graduate who went on to get her MBA from Columbia Business School, graduating in 2008. Prior to business school Alison worked on the Goldman Sachs and Jaguar accounts at OgilvyInteractive and was an early team member at TheaterMania.com, a startup media and ticket software company. After graduating from CBS, she worked at

Alison Lindland and colleague

American Express Interactive, and is now director of business development at Kohort, a venture-backed group management and event planning platform.

Alison says these tactical pointers cover a potential entrepreneurship career. Personally, I think her recommendations apply to anyone hoping to take a big jump into something new and different careerwise.

Get to know everyone in your cohort. There’s a temptation to gravitate to the people you are just going to be friends with or have to work with in study team but guaranteed you’ll be missing out on some terrific people and contacts.
Network with your classmates. Once you’ve identified the industry or area of focus that you want to pursue after graduation use all the internal databases and or LinkedIn to identify current classmates who worked in that field and do coffee chats with them. I met lots of great classmates who I otherwise would never have met socially, whose background ranged from telco engineers who gave me mini tutorials in how mobile tech actually works to mobile entrepreneurs who had worked on interesting early mobile dating apps.
Get to know your professors personally and tell them what you’re interested in. Having gone to a small liberal arts school, I came from a mindset where you always got to know your profs personally and would have them over to your house for dinner. Most business schools are not this way so you can really stand out if you make an effort and you never know what it will yield.
Seek out opportunities to TA for your favorite profs or help with their research. I TA’d for Prof. Whadwa’s excellent strategy consulting class for a session for the Exec MBA class. This a great chance to get to know my favorite professor better, and to know 65 terrific Exec MBA students.
Volunteer to help out institutes or think tanks in your school. You would be surprised how many institutes and think tanks your school funds. Though the smaller ones may not have a great profile to students you would be surprised to learn how many industry and high profile alums may be involved. At CBS I was thrilled to discover the Columbia Institute of Tele-Information and I simply walked in, introduced myself and said I wanted to get involved. Turns out they were in the early stages of planning a Location Based Services conference for the summer . Given my contacts from my summer doing mobile at Amex, they were happy to enlist me. It was without a doubt one of the best experiences I had in school.
Get off campus and talk to everyone. If you’re nervous about cold-emailing people for networking coffee chats, start with the guest speakers in your courses. Connect with them in person before they left the actual classroom and follow up that day asking for a coffee. It’s a great warm intro and usually you’ll know more about what they’re working on after the talk. In my case, if they could not meet with me, they would give me someone else to talk to.
But if you’re nervous about cold emailing people - don’t be. Being an MBA gives you carte blanche to reach out to people - it is what professionals expect of MBAs. Just say you’re really interested in something related to their career or company and can you come to their office for a 20 minute coffee chat. 90% of the time people said yes to this request - and again, if they didn’t I’d ask them if there was someone else I could talk to. Remember to make networking hay while the MBA sun shines. And set yourself a target - like 3 a week so you keep doing these.
Take a class in another school or that is widely cross registered. MBAs are great but you’re going to spend most of your career working in cross functional teams - why not get to know these people (lawyers, journalists, designers, developers etc) now.
Lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t remind you to go to all the happy hours and on some major group trips. You’re working hard in school and this is a great way to recharge and really grow those relationships - plus you’ll never have time in your adult lives to do things like this again.

Phew! It's exhausting, but that's the beauty of the MBA experience -- it's all there for you if you want it.

--Betsy Massar, taking a leaf from the Alison Lindland playbook. For those who want to jump in and experience the busy and rewarding MBA experience, make sure you set yourself up for success with Admitted: An Interactive Workbook for Getting Into a Top MBA Program.

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January 19, 2012

What is the Best Business School for a Career in Finance?

Because I worked for Goldman Sachs right out of business school, later worked in investment management, and now consult with companies like BlackRock, lots of people ask what MBA program they should attend if they want a career in finance. And they also wonder if they should go to graduate school at all. For the purpose of this article, let's assume you want to pursue an MBA.

Riches can be yours!

Here’s what it does not depend on: rankings. Rankings have something to do with what business school or finance degree you might want to research, but they won’t tell you whether it’s the right program for you. And rankings are all over the place. A few months ago, I wrote a blog post on this subject with lots of quotes from the Assistant Dean at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. Tuck has been ranked overall #1, #6, #7, #14, #18, depending on who you talk to, and encourages students to look beyond the actual listing.

Figuring out the Right Path

So which of the top schools might be better in corporate finance, or M&A, or hedge funds, or private equity? Is Wharton better in finance than Harvard, or is Stanford the best way to get a job in venture capital? There are a lot of opinions all over the internet – and many of them are simply wrong. So what should you believe? You’ve got several ways to figure this out.

1. See who is recruiting at your target school. Not everyone gets a job on campus, but take a look at the recruiting list for any school. You can usually find it through their employment report. Here is Columbia Business School’s employment report, for example. The list of recruiters starts on page 10. Or here’s UC Berkeley Haas’ list of companies that have come on campus. Examine it carefully. You might not find some of the big New York PE shops, but you’ll find Cambridge Associates, which for you, might be an even more likely stepping stone into venture capital, private equity, or hedge funds.

2. Visit the schools and/or talk to students about their experiences. With LinkedIn and Facebook, you must know someone who knows someone. Many schools put student contact information right on their website, for example, see this list of student ambassadors from Michigan Ross or NYU Stern. Others, like Harvard Business School, present interviews of students—who are all easy enough to find if you look hard enough.

3. Investigate clubs at your target business school. Columbia’s Private Equity and Venture Capital Club has its own website, and don’t be fooled by the log-in. Just jump to club officers, and you’ll have plenty to work with. More interested in Chicago? Booth doesn’t just have a finance club, it has a corporate finance club, an investment banking club, a PE club, and and even a distressed investing and restructuring club.

4. Talk to actual people in your target industry and find out what paths they took. While the big guys in the PE industry look like a straight shot from Morgan Stanley M&A, venture capital, hedge funds, and other investment firms might have a more circuitous route. Hey, Mitt Romney came to the private equity business by way of management consulting, so why can’t you?

5. Network. This is essentially the same as item #4, but it’s so important that I am mentioning it again. Because you want to hit the ground running once you get to business school, it makes sense to start building your contacts now. Brian DeChesare, an expert on breaking into Wall Street, encourages prospective financiers to “network like a ninja” because, “even if you’re at Harvard you can’t rely on on-campus recruiting.” And even if you get an interview through on-campus recruiting, you want to have friends who can help you actually land the job and do well there.

And in the meantime, have fun with the process. You’ll learn a lot and meet lots of people. And it’s definitely more enjoyable than signing up on e-Harmony.

--Betsy Massar

Don't forget to check out our new book Admitted: An Interactive Workbook for Getting Into a Top MBA Program

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November 9, 2011

Wrestling with MBA Application Essays

Filed under: Essays — Tags: Admissions, Applications, business school, Columbia Business School, Harvard Business School, HBS, MBA, MBA admissions, mba essays, MBA Podcaster, Stanford MBA, Wharton — admin @ 7:23 pm

You are thinner, of course

If you know anyone who is applying to business school for the class of 2014, you may have heard them muttering to themselves, “What does matter most to me and why?” (Stanford GSB) or “Have I ever learned anything from a setback?” (Harvard Business School) They may be victims of an energy-draining syndrome that shows itself every year about this time called MBA essay nightmare. It’s a regular sinkhole of drafting, pondering, redrafting, questioning, redrafting, wondering if it is getting better or worse, redrafting, and whining.

The essays matter. Of course the GMAT does too, and, but the real differentiator is the answer to the question behind all those questions, “Why should we admit you to our business school?”

Your answer is going to be as unique as your own DNA. But getting there is quite the chore. You could watch this MBA Podcaster video on YouTube regarding essays (in which I feature with admissions reps from Wharton and Columbia Business School), or you could read on.

I’m going to tell you a secret. Writing isn’t easy for anyone. Oh, every so often, someone will tell you that they whipped up their essays the night before the deadline and were accepted everywhere they applied. Fine. That person is in the minority.

If you are finding that you are writing and rewriting, and rewriting again, and then stumbling, and rewriting, you are not alone. Ernest Hemingway was said to have rewritten the ending of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” 39 times. That’s just the ending. That means he already struggled with getting words down on paper for the first time. Remember the movie “Adaptation,” where the character played by Nicholas Cage nearly drives himself crazy from writers block? That should remind you that lots of people have faced down a blank page.

To write those essays, you have to start somewhere, and believe me, your first try doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, it can be terrible. Annie Lamott, author of Bird by Bird, a wonderful book on the writing process, life, and everything else, says it is ok to write whatever comes into your mind. “For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous," she says. "In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.”

Death by Rewriting

Or what if you are looking at an essay that you’ve rewritten two or three times, and it still isn’t going anywhere? It feels like it is getting worse word by word. Don’t be afraid to stop writing. Read it first thing in the morning if you are an early person, or right before you go to bed if you are a late person. Or both. Keep your computer or a pen and a printout of the draft by your bed. Print it out, walk around with it.

If you hate it, talk the essay over with a friend, confidant, or advisor. Tell them the story without worrying about the words on the paper. Does it makes sense? Are you excited by it? If not, go back and forth with this other person: have them tell you when they feel your energy. If they don’t feel your energy at all when you tell them your story, believe me, the admissions officer won’t feel it either. You may have to start all over.

These are just some quick ideas to remind you that it is perfectly OK for you to feel stuck. This is really, really normal. Just don’t be afraid to rewrite, revise, and reconsider your own assumptions. You probably don’t have to go around 39 times, but give yourself permission to work it until it's right.

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September 7, 2011

More MBA Schools Accept the GRE & GMAT

Filed under: Application ideas — Tags: Berkeley Haas, Cambridge Judge, Chicago Booth, CMU Tepper, Columbia Business School, Cornell Johnson, Fuqua, GMAT, GRE, HBS, INSEAD, Kellogg, McCombs, Michigan Ross, MIT Sloan, NYU Stern, Oxford Said, Stanford GSB, Tuck, UCLA Anderson, UVA Darden, Wharton, Yale SOM — admin @ 10:17 am

Hot off the press, Kellogg's full-time MBA program now accepts the GRE. As does Cornell's Johnson School. Here's the updated list as of September 7, 2011. It's always great to check; it wasn't on the Kellogg website until I emailed and -- voila! There's no harm in asking!

School	GRE?	Link
Columbia	YES	Columbia Business School
Cornell	YES	Cornell Johnson
Darden	YES	UVA Darden
HBS	YES	Harvard Business School
INSEAD	YES	INSEAD
Kellogg	YES	Kellogg MBA
Mich Ross	YES	University of Michigan Ross
MIT Sloan	YES	MIT Sloan
NYU Stern	YES	NYU Stern
Stanford	YES	Stanford GSB
Tepper	YES	Carnegie Mellon Tepper
Texas	YES	Texas McCombs
Tuck	YES	Dartmouth Tuck
Wharton	YES	Wharton MBA
Yale	YES	Yale School of Management
Duke	MAYBE	Duke Fuqua
Cambridge	NO	Cambridge Judge
Chicago	NO	Chicago Booth
Haas	NO	UC Berkeley Haas
LBS	NO	London Business School
Oxford	NO	Oxford Said
UCLA	NO	UCLA Anderson

If you are looking for more schools the ETS link has a full list of MBA programs which accept the GRE.

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June 8, 2010

10 Tips for Getting Into Business School -- Tip 8: Talk Around

Filed under: 10 Tips,Application ideas — Tags: 10 Tips, Admissions, Betsy Massar, business school, Columbia Business School, MBA, networking — admin @ 6:20 pm

Sorry for what may have appeared to be a break in the 10 Tips series, I gave a webinar for 85 Broads last week, where we reviewed all 10 Tips, complete with a snazzy PowerPoint presentation. In terms of blogging, I’ve still got three more tips to go, including today’s tip, Talk Around.

Along with Tip 6, Stay Sane, Talking Around is one of my favorite tips, because it is so beneficial – you can use it to test out your own ideas and then open yourself up to new ones. It has been said that the best ideas are talked about. Good ideas are inspired by, and refined with, conversation.

Right in Your Own Backyard
As you are mulling over your business school plans (Can I? Should I? When? Where? How?), you may start with friends and family, and then move on to a wider circle. If you can talk about it at work, find people who have gone down the route you are contemplating – recent MBAs, or my current favorite, people who might be in your town or your company for the summer. They are the ones right in the middle of it all, they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid of that particular school and are exploring or have decided upon an industry. What a fount of information!

Talking around is a great excuse to meet new people too. Many business schools have alumni ambassadors who make themselves available to prospective students. Columbia Business School even puts student names and email addresses on its website, so you don’t have to go through the admissions office to connect.

Getting the Real Lowdown
Current or recent students are great resources to help separate fact from fiction. Certainly each school has its own PR machine, and as I have said since the beginning, admissions offices are increasingly transparent about what they are looking for. But they cannot tell you about whether the career office is any good or not, or if the school felt too competitive, remote, lonely or overwhelming at times. Students can tell you whether the famous professors or the $150,000 price tag are worth it, or if all consultants are boring. Graduates, or professionals in your target industry, can tell you whether it is as fun and interesting as you hoped it would be. (Is private equity really that sexy?)

Talking around also has the benefit of teaching you to learn to think on your feet – a big part of business school and business training. You may even learn how to put together your own personal elevator pitch.

Hobnobbing for Fun and Profit
Another bonus is that you may meet new people simply for the fun of it. I know people who have, through networking, met romantic partners, buddies or roommates, been introduced to new hobbies, learned about new shops or restaurants, all while expanding their Linked In network! There’s really no downside to getting out; in fact, it’s good to get away from the computer now that social networking is all the rage. Yes, I have met friends through Twitter – my idol, Doug Barg, a of GeeMatters, is one, and we do have plans to meet at an event in Philadelphia in July. Indeed, a handshake is stronger than a tweet, and a lot more memorable!

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June 1, 2010

10 Tips for Getting into Business School — Tip 7: Daydream

Filed under: Essays — Tags: 10 Tips, Admissions, business school, Columbia Business School, getting in, Malia Mason, MBA, Rock Your Application — admin @ 12:41 pm

Welcome again to the 10 Tips series. Thanks to 85 Broads the networking group for amazing women, the series has been turned into a webinar. If you are a member of that august group, you can find them on the 85 Broads website, look for videos, and then Click on Jam Sessions. The PowerPoint will be up on SlideShare and I will have a transcript of the Q&A available.

Now down to the business of daydreaming.

Daydreaming is also good for you. Really. I know, you wished you could have told that to Mrs. Palmer, your third-grade teacher, who was always bringing you back down to earth during long division. But it is an effective source of inspiration for your essays and your story. (And it’s a great excuse for procrastination, um, err, processing, but please don’t let it get out of hand.

Daydreaming Inspires Insight
Daydreaming serves a purpose. It helps you generate ideas, conceptualize stuff that may just be a feeling, and helps you find new and unusual ways to solve complex problems. Research shows that daydreaming allows the brain to make new associations and connections. Neuro-psycholgist Dr. Malia F. Mason, daydreaming expert argues,

“By allowing your mind the freedom to roam, the chances that you’re going to have an insight are much higher…Daydreaming builds on this fundamental capacity people have for being able to project themselves into imaginary situations, like the future. Without that skill, we'd be pretty limited creatures."

No wonder she is an expert on decision making and teaching “Managerial Negotiations” and the core leadership course at Columbia Business School!

Daydreaming helps you imagine possible worlds. This is why I recommend that potential MBA candidates look over the application essay questions well in advance to let your mind explore the possible answers you may not even know about. As Dr. Mason might advise: project yourself into the future! Application questions are deliberately open-ended, with the hope that you do some creative exploration before writing. And what better way to do that exploration but daydreaming?

See Yourself in the Future
How about those daydreams when you were little? Some of them may not feel so farfetched now, and they may have led you to where you are today. Every application has a short- and long-term goals essay. I encourage you to reverse the order the question – switch it around to your long and short term goals. When you daydream about your long term goals, do you see yourself as head of the World Health Organization announcing that AIDS has been eliminated? Are you the head of the Senate Banking Committee? Or are you running your own private equity firm?

Daydreaming allows you to think big without having to fill in all the pieces yet. This part is about your destiny. You don’t have to have every little detail right – how can you? But you do want to be able to show that you are able to come up with creative solutions. Because after all, tomorrow’s business leaders need to have creativity to solve some really really big problems.

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