enlightening, really....

Wow, some one must not be happy with their program.  For starters, the real deal - in reference to the original post:

 

1. You have two full academic years to learn, not 45 days.  If you're talking about learning something during a slightly shortened quarter, well, that's the same scenario as in undergrad.  Via your logic, undergrad should also be a complete waste.

2.  If you can't learn from your classmates, either you're the most amazing person ever, you're an arrogant prick who refuses to listen to your classmates, delusional, or just out right suck at talking to people...

3,  I'm not going to comment on the technical degree...it's clearly not science or engineering, so in that sense, I agree with you.  Although since you mentioned Chicago...if you take their analytical finance emphasis, well, that gets pretty darn technical.

4.  You can absolutely learn an awful lot in the program...at least if you choose to.  You can learn anything from complex finance, to describing wine (wine clubs), everything from you peers (which you apparently have already neglected), team work (if you decide to participate, but seeing that you apparently hate your classmates, this is probably not going to work for you either), to skills and experience through experiential learning programs...if you can't learn anything by working in a PE firm for an entire term, well, please refer to the general comments provided in #2.

5.  Well, I do have to agree with the party aspect of the MBA...nice one, you finally made a valid point.  Business school is a great time, you meet lots of entertaining people who like to experience life...darn.

6.  A fluff degree?  Well, I'm not going to say that it can't be a fluff degree...you can make it what you want.  If you decide to turn it into complete fluff, you're wasting your opportunity and cash.

7.  A commodity?  I'm not so sure about that.  For starters, Chicago's class is less than 600, not 1500.  If you count the part timers, etc, you may get to 1500, but the full time students have signficant advantages for recruiting and elsewhere.  Basically, if an MBA was completely commoditized, you would have practically zero differentiation amongst programs.  While this may be true if you migrate down the quality ladder, the grads from the top ranked programs are highly differentiated in terms of salary, experience, where they want to go and what they want to do...that's not a commodity...just look at the salary distributions of the people in the top 5 programs...that's a big range.  If you go to a pretty crappy program, the degree may begin to look more like a commodity.  Interestingly enough, the general consensus is that the value of the degree essentially becomes zero at a certain point (say programs ranked under 50).  This behavior is suggestive of poor programs essentially being a commodity, as in a commodity market, profit margins are essentially driven to zero because of competitive forces (i.e. your ROI will go to zero).

1.
His point is pretty valid with the shortened time you have to learn..you don't become an academic expert in any one area (finance included) but the purpose of the MBA is not academic by nature.  In my MBA experience thus far the smartest finance guys were not the engineers finance majors but the banking/pe guys ie those who've done it before know it better than anyone studying finance 168 hrs a week in a MBA Program

2.
I disagree - learning from classmates is critical and more important than from profs.  Hence the value add of going to a top MBA Program

3.
If you want to be a master in analytical finance you're better off doing a financial engineering degree, not MBA in Finance

4.
Learning is a subjective term

5.
of course b school is party time!

6.
B school is 80% brand and 20% residual; so it is fluff 80% if you're only going for brand

7.
I don't think low ranked MBA Programs are commodities, commodites are high value add but little added value.  Poor MBA Programs don't have much value add to the student since the academics suck and so does the brand.  MBA is surely not a commodity at the upper echelon schools given the few number of students graduating annually.  Top 10 schools put out max 7000 grads annually while the job market creates far more jobsthan that per annum.  Now you're also seeing MBA's spread out into non-traditional industries apart from banking and consulting, so that hedge will definitely increase the value of the MBA in the future provided those people are successful.

Gluck!
Sam
Kellogg MBA
Wharton Undergrad

my friend check the stats....of placememt at top 30 schhols

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/10/1029_best_and_worst_mba_job_placement/index.htm

companies dont need so many bankers/consultants/brand managers....lets start doing sometthing real versus moving money around.....if u love finance, do a phd in finance and teach

 

dude with such a huge email, i am doubting that u really go to a fluff school where u have so much time on hand....dude the market is bad so focus on that internship search :)

Just some thoughts from my own experience currently:

I never took accounting before. Struggled immensely with that class. But after "45 days" I look at financial statements very differently. Looking forward to the other two ACCT classes I will be taking.

I never had macroeconomics. Struggling currently. But since I started - newspaper articles about the economy have a whole different meaning for me. I now reasonably understand why the Obama administration believes the govt stimulus package will slow down the rise in unemployment, and why the federal reserve likes to play with interest rates. All this in just "45 days"!

I never had statistics before. I put in a lot more time than it feels like some students do, but I am really starting to feel some solid understanding about how to do multiple regressions and how to interpolate/extrapolate to predict future values. This is extremely useful for market forecasting, understanding clinical trial data in a pharma company, or even trying to predict election outcomes. I'm probably at around day 35 of the "45 days".

In management class we took a trip to Gettysburg, PA - site of one of the bloodiest battles during the U.S. Civil War. We talked about leadership strategies the generals of both sides employed. One classmate from China talked about how the U.S. is lucky that Gettysburg was somewhat of a turning point, and that today the North and South live in the same country and coexist peacefully. Other countries aren't always so lucky. This caused an interesting debate over civil wars in different countries. I'm at around day 35 for this class too.

The other day about 30 classmates went out to dinner. I met some new ones I hadn't talked to before. One guy who was someone I didn't think twice about before turned out to be the son of the CEO of a large Fortune 500 company. We got into a nice discussion on what a CEO job is really like - is it mostly administrative, HR, and PR work with the investors or is there more substance to it? What was life like with a father like that - did his father spend any time with his family? We discussed all this over dinner and beers.

Bottom line - your experience is what you make of it. The MBA program is the first schooling I've gotten that has so much practical value.

If that's what you believe, then you may want to note that no one is actually forcing you to do an MBA.

FF