Story: New MBAs finding education pays off big time

This is good news for those working on an MBA or those that have just completed one.

Part-time versus Full-time MBA, Which One is Right for You?

I was contacted in December to participate in the inaugural podcast for a new site called MBA Podcaster. The topic was part-time versus full-time MBA programs and I was supposed to give a student's perspective. Mark Rice, Dean of the Graduate School of Business at Babson and Dr. John Mather, Executive Director of Masters Programs at Carnegie-Mellon also participated. It was an interesting experience and overall I think the discussion was good. You can download the podcast here. They've recorded a few other podcasts now too.

More Design Challenge advice

I just read Sam's latest entry and I couldn't resist adding my $.02. He says the new SDM'ers in the January program shouldn't burnout on the design challenges (DC) because they are more about team building and having fun than competition. Yeah, that's what the DC losers say! :-) Speaking as a member of the winning DC1 team last year, I can say that while all that stuff is important, it sure feels nice to win if for no other reason than you can rub it in your classmates face for the duration of the SDM program. Kinda like I'm doing right now.

Seriously, I had a great DC1 team and I deserve little if any credit for our success. I was "project manager" which amounted to making sure we were making progress (which we always were) and staying out of the way. Interestingly enough, in over 10 years of work experience, my DC1 team was one of the best teams I've EVER worked with. I got lucky. I've also been on teams at MIT that would rank as the worst I ever worked with.

New SDM'ers: my one piece of advice for you (which doesn't really apply to DC1) is if you are allowed to pick your team for a class project, PICK YOUR TEAM. Don't get assigned to a random team. A couple of times last year I thought I'd be adventurous and let my team form through osmosis and perhaps I'd meet some new people along the way. Sometimes you'll get lucky like I did with DC1, but other times it will be a disaster. In fact, when teams are picked at random you are more likely to end up on a disaster or end up on one that no one else wanted to join because everyone else picked their teams ahead of time.

One more to go

Another semester has come and gone. I'm back in NC now. It will be nice to get settled at home again, but I'll miss my friends at MIT and the campus atmosphere. I do enjoy the college environment. It was my last semester as an on-campus student. I have only one more semester to go before I graduate. I have two half term classes and one full term class to go. Oh, plus my thesis ;-) While I don't think it will be as busy as last semester (in which I took 6 classes), I still have some work to do.

Last semester was a productive one. After spending much of the last 3 months trying to figure out what I'm going to do when I grow up, I now have a much better idea. I attended several networking events and met several new friends and potential business partners along the way. I also got to play basketball regularly with Yoav, Ilana, Paul, Sam, Deming, and others which was always fun.

All in all and despite the weather ;-) I couldn't have asked for a better experience in Boston. It was hard on the family life, but it was short-term and I took full advantage of it (as is evident from the 19 classes I've taken to date and 45 speakers I saw while on campus).

I wouldn't expect much out of this blog moving forward. Now that I'm back home and reintegrated fully with my day job, I won't be as involved with what's going on at MIT and therefore won't have much to blog about.