Reading through various blogs as we prepared this week’s edition of FFF, it once again became obvious why this ‘blogging’ thing has become so popular. Simply put, the MBA-blogger galaxy is buzzing with excellent and informative posts this week.
We’ll start with applicant-blogger LaserLikeFocus, who documented his recent trip to visit Stanford and Berkeley/Haas and managed to combine incisive commentary on the two programs with a bit of humor. In a similar vein, MBAyisyen reports back from LBS and Oxbridge visits, offering his impression of the three schools, complete with Harry Potter references. Also spending time in England was RusGirl who shares her impressions of LBS and lists all of the friendly student-bloggers she met while visiting, including theDivineMissN, who was gracious enough to be her host (this just goes to show that being a blogger pays)! Closing out our campus-visits portion of FFF, we find Maverick, who spent time on the IMD campus and offers a really extensive post detailing the experience. This is great reading for those of you considering IMD.
Moving along to other applicant-blogger issues, it seem that GMAT logistics have created obstacles for a couple of bloggers. Paa”ji” describes the horrific experience of computer troubles (the test-center machine crashed) while he was taking his GMAT and RusGirl tackles problems with her score reports, which INSEAD claims were never received.
Beyond school visits and GMAT issues, many applicants are facing the MBA interview process. Franky4MBA describes his recent interview with a ‘European school’ and examines his uncertainty about leaving a comfortable work environment. Resolute celebrates a Wharton interview invite and begins thinking about preparation while RedWolf debates whether or not he should have his Wharton interview in NYC with an alum or on the Wharton-campus. In other interview news, Vatsa describes his Tuck interview experience and Resolute offers a few thoughts on his Fuqua interview.
Closing out our news from the applicant-blogger community, SgHama offers a useful update on his progress with the Tuck application in order to meet the December 1st deadline and PupStar78 describes the bit of R2 deadline panic that motivated him to get cracking on his essays. His post also raises a very important issue with regards to MBA essays and how much knowledge one should assume on the part of the reader. [Hint: your MBA admissions reader will likely know very little about the nuances or technical jargon associated with your job.]
As we shift gears to the MBA-student blogging community, there are several posts worth highlighting. For starters, we’d like to call your attention to a posting from Hella which describes the Wharton interview training process from the standpoint of the student interviewer. Beyond that, there was an excellent post from MarketWizWannabe on a Wisconsin trip to meet with Warren Buffet and news from BYU-MBA on the decision to increase the MBA class size at BYU. In other on-campus news, Tiy reports briefly on the Net Impact conference at Stanford, Tagad_Tale documents the frenzy of the second year at Tuck and Mark offers a great run down of second-year coursework at HBS.
One topic that on the minds of several MBA students is grading. Jerry Blank expresses his frustration about class participation grading at Yale, while INSEAD06 checks in from the post-grade report battlefield at INSEAD and Death Spiral shares his INSEAD performance. In a somewhat related posting, FutureMBAGirl talks about recruiting biases and grade non-disclosure at Wharton.
Beyond grades, current MBA students spent the past week sharing all sorts of interesting news. Bharanidharan writes about a course in rural marketing at ISB, Gandaki reports on mock-interviews and class presentations at IESE and leMBA touches base with a report from HEC. Closing out this week’s edition of FFF are three posts from Chicago GSB bloggers: Wakechick details her glimpse of the first snow flakes in Chicago, PowerYogi battles sleep deprivation and corporate presentations (a deadly mix) and the Daily Travails offers an incredible story about how not to visit schools…
Have a great weekend everyone! Please feel free to email the Clear Admit team if your MBA-related blog is not on our radar screen and you’d like to be considered for the Best of Blogging Awards 2005-06.
