Welcome to another edition of FFF, our weekly recap of the recent happenings in the MBA blogosphere. It’s been a relatively quiet week, with applicants and students alike distracted by the winter weather and Valentine’s Day events, but let’s take a look at what the folks who have been blogging have been up to.
On the applicant front, we’ve seen nearly the full range of admissions-related activities and emotions this week, running from inblue‘s Wharton invite anxiety and Suser‘s disheartening transcript snafu to Anand‘s jubilation over his Darden admit and AsianGal‘s excitement over her upcoming Columbia interview. As for stages of the process, mba_salsera is thinking of retaking the GMAT while waiting for word from various schools and AAMBA2009 is planning a trip to New York to visit Stern for an interview, while Rohit has admission and fellowship offers from ISB and Rochester and Juggler has not only her school selection but also her Wharton housing situation settled (and some great things to say about the helpfulness of the school community). Speaking of helpful, a number of applicants are also focused on sharing information and acting as a resource for others. Admitted applicant necromonger shared the story of his second INSEAD interview, Rungee runs through an interesting recap of her Wharton Winter Welcome Weekend experience, and, inspired by an old entry of Marina‘s, Iday has pledged to document each milestone of his path to Chicago for the reference of future applicants.
Similarly, the student population is facing a spectrum of concerns and reactions. Between a calculator malfunction in corporate finance and an up-in-the-air phone interview, it sounds like Jacek had a trying week at ESADE, whereas Chicago student Le Voyageur seems to be adjusting well to the very different semester schedule in Jerusalem and FM checks in to report that he’s had a great few weeks at LBS in terms of both classes and recruiting. A post by Paxti covering a week in the life of a London MBA student demonstrates the range of one person’s experience, while LL‘s account (and photo documentation) of the Wharton Follies show earlier this month and John Galt‘s comments on a different sort of folly demonstrate the potential disparity of the experiences of students at the same program.
As for the typical elements of the MBA experience, there’s naturally been talk of recruiting; MBA Gladiator finds comfort in the fact that job-seekers at Yale SOM still outnumber those with job offers, but is unfortunately frustrated about the mixed signals he’s been getting from nonprofit employers. Meanwhile, Angel Angie has two job offers in hand, and shares some of the more interesting elements of her hedge fund and i-banking interviews. On the academic side, Zanat0s looks toward his P4 classes at INSEAD, Ashwyn looks back at a school ski trip and midterms at IESE and Hallonman takes an inventory of things he is experiencing much of at the moment, both pleasant (diversity in his class groups) and otherwise (a rather heavy courseload). Finally, looking at activities outside of class, both Nate and FromCali report on the annual Ross Follies show and profess a desire to be involved next time around. J-term Johnny offers a great account of his experience at Columbia’s Media and Entertainment Conference, and Angel Angie explains what she took away from a “Building Business Leadership in Africa” event at LBS.
That concludes this week’s installment. We hope that our MBA blogging friends will keep the great content coming, and that everyone has a great weekend!
