Holen, point taken. The guy is a loser and a troll. Will take your advice and ignore.
Switching gears, here's an article in an attempt to bring this thread back on topic...
Hi Eclectic,
I'm attending Chicago GSB in the fall. Where are you located at the moment? I'm in Australia, but off to spend a month in the south of France before coming to Chicago in August.
Coco.
Recent article which may be of interest from a current CBS student's perspective...
Columbia lands you in the jet setThe Sunday Times May 21, 2006MBA SpecialWithin days of arriving in New York last August to start my two-year MBA at Columbia, one of the world's top business schools, I was invited to a flat-warming party by one of the guys in my class. Fine, I thought, and took the subway down. I'd been to plenty of parties back in Bristol, where I did my first degree. I knew what to expect, the kitchen, the wine bottles, the student gossip. Or I thought I did.But then I arrived at the flat — to discover it was a penthouse on the 79th floor of a building overlooking Central Park. I just thought "Wow". Here I was in New York in this amazing penthouse with students from all over the world who had already achieved things that would leave most people gasping.In my class there is a Nasa engineer, an adviser to the Afghan minister of finance, a producer for NBC, and the founder of Wall Street Volunteers in New York. Sometimes even the cynic has to admit they are on to something.There are people in my year from 46 countries who between them speak 50 languages. As I meekly raised my hand to introduce myself, I decided not to draw attention to my GCSE French and opted instead to highlight my (very) basic Mandarin. Big mistake, I realized, as my future roommate, Ya Zhu from Hunan, stepped forward.It's the melting pot of cultures I've been thrown into that has most changed me to date. Back in London, I realised, all my friends were English. Only two of my friends out here are from Britain. In my group (most of our work is done and marked in the same group, forcing you to learn collaborative and teamworking skills), I have Marc, an investment banker originally from Lebanon; Mili, a marketer for The Gap from California; and Kartik, a financial analyst from India, as well as myself with a media background in Britain.It's in everyone's interest to get along because for many assignments you are graded with your group — reflecting the latest thinking that the leaders of the future are the ones whose team would do anything for them.After a few weeks here I found myself spotting types. There's the banking contingent: the classmates who want to move into consultancy or global investment banking and earn huge amounts of money within five years. There's the family business contingent — for instance, the student from Texas who is going to step into a major role in his family's oil business.Entrepreneurs too: twentysomethings who have already started their own company. One girl last year had set up a bridal boot camp before coming to Columbia, getting people into shape for their wedding. It was making serious money, but she wanted to learn how to expand. And there are people like me, who want to stay in the industry they worked in before, but at a higher level.By the end of the course — the packed days start at 8am and end around 10pm, after which we all go on to party or dine (well, you are in New York with 600 other students keen to have the best time they can) — I think the thing that will most have changed about me will be my confidence. Because I will be able to walk into any organisation and understand the jobs different people do, I will have the self-belief as well as the qualification to open career doors I previously didn't contemplate.This summer I'm doing an internship at Fox News. It may be a sign of the market that all my friends here landed the internships they wanted. The top companies are recruiting on campus. It's a boom time again for MBA students. It makes you feel that if you make the effort you can get what you want easily.Me, I plan to return to Britain. As my mother put it in her congratulations card when I was offered a place at Columbia: "We are so proud of you. Please don't marry an American."Juliet Kennard was talking to Sian Griffiths
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2189408.html
The implications are clear: if you're at the wrong school, your chances of making friends will be severely limited.
http://news.efinancialcareers.com/HOW_TO_ITEM/newsItemId-3736
1) It's just an article, chill the F out. I didn't write it or say anything bad about you or your school. No reason to get all butt hurt.
2) Stop following me around like a little doggie, what's your problem?
3) I'm sorry you're so upset the article doesn't say "Chicago is #1, rah, rah, rah!!!". There's not all that much I can do about that, so go back to your dirty little cave, troll.
Interesting article below. It appears that the Stanford GSB is adopting a model similar to that of the Chicago GSB.
Graduate School of Business to adopt customized-curriculum model in 2007
BY BARBARA BUELL
The Graduate School of Business is redesigning its MBA program to allow students to customize their educational experience.
The new model, to be introduced in the fall of 2007, will "challenge every student to his or her fullest capability," said Business School Dean Robert L. Joss, the Philip H. Knight Professor. Creation of the flexible program was based on four months of study and interviews with faculty, students and alumni by an 11-member task force. On May 24, the Business School faculty overwhelmingly approved what is regarded as the school's most far-reaching curriculum change in the past 30 years.
"These new ideas do not tweak at the margins; they aim to create a new, more global and more engaging experience for students," said task force leader Garth Saloner, the Jeffrey S. Skoll Professor of Electronic Commerce, Strategic Management and Economics. "To be sure, the fundamentals—finance, accounting, operations, marketing and strategy, organizational behavior and economics—are still there. But the plan capitalizes on the school's strategic choice to remain small, and it makes students think about what is necessary to good management from the first week they arrive here."
Jeffrey Pfeffer, the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior and a frequent critic of management education, said the changes are the most important thing that has happened in his 27 years at the university. "The concept is a complete restructuring of the educational process," he said. "Today, in a typical large, tiered classroom, students have too passive a role in their learning. This makes students more responsible for their education and potentially engages them more profoundly and more deeply."
The new program will require significant funding, a 5 to 10 percent increase in faculty and, ultimately, a new facility with flexible classrooms to accommodate more and smaller seminars, Joss said. The school has developed a building proposal, which will be presented to the Board of Trustees this month. If accepted, the school will pursue a plan for new buildings on campus.
The new program includes four key ingredients.
First, the new curriculum will be customized to each student. After a common program in the first quarter, students will face no specific required courses but instead a set of distribution requirements to give them the breadth of knowledge that a general manager needs. Requirements will vary in order to challenge every student regardless of past experience. In some cases, "flavors" of a given topic will be offered so that students can tailor their curriculum to their career goals. To take advantage of this flexibility, during the first quarter students will take courses that raise fundamental questions of managerial relevance and point to where answers may be found. These will include Teams and Organizational Behavior, Strategic Leadership, Managerial Finance and The Global Context of Management. Students also will form an advising relationship with a faculty member and, aided by placement exams, the team will craft an individual study plan.
Second, the new curriculum will foster a deeper intellectual exploration of subjects through a fifth course, tentatively titled Critical Analytical Thinking, during the first quarter. In seminars smaller than 20 people, students will examine issues that transcend any single function or discipline of management, addressing questions such as: What responsibilities does a corporation have to society? When do markets perform well, and when do they perform poorly? When does it make sense to exercise discretion, and when should relatively rigid rules govern behavior? Students will be taught to think and argue about such issues clearly, concisely and analytically, setting the tone for the rest of the program. In satisfying distribution requirements and in general electives, students will be asked to think across disciplines and functions on their own. A second-year autumn schedule will feature intensive one-week seminars, during which students will study specific subjects. The school also plans to add to its complement of Bass Seminars, which are funded in part by a recent $30 million gift from alumnus Robert M. Bass. The seminars, with as few as 10 people, will move students beyond passive learning and into topics of their own choosing. Guided by supervising faculty members, students will be responsible for creating the content of the seminars.
Third, the plan calls for enhancing the school's global management curriculum. This begins with the first-quarter course on The Global Context of Management and proceeds in two ways: The school will continue to globalize its cases and course materials, and students will be required to obtain international experience. This can be fulfilled by a study trip, an internship, an overseas service-learning trip or a student exchange, such as the school's new program with Tsinghua University's School of Management and Economics in China.
Finally, the new curriculum includes expanded leadership and communication development. The Strategic Leadership course will integrate strategy with leadership development and implementation. Critical Analytical Thinking will help hone students' written and oral communication skills. In a new capstone seminar near the end of the program, students will synthesize what they have learned, examine strengths and weaknesses in their personal leadership style and reflect on how they hope to achieve their goals as they embark on their careers.