How We Spend Our Time in Business School

London Business School doesn’t tell us how to use the 168 hours in a week; how we spend our time is (mostly) up to us. Based on my first four months here, here’s a rough breakdown of the options:

·Classes: 10 to 17 hours / week. Since some core courses last the entire 10 week term, other classes for 3 to 5 sessions (e.g. Ethics, IT for Business Value, and Strategy Problem Solving), and skills courses just 1 day (e.g. Listening and Observing, Persuading and Influence, Negotiating, Public Speaking), each week’s schedule is different. During a busy week in November, for instance, I had:

o Corporate Finance from 8:15am to 11:00am and Strategy from 3:45pm to 6:30pm on Monday
o Accounting 8:15am to 11:00am, Managerial Economics from 12:45 to 3:30, and Accounting Application from 5:15pm to 7:00pm on Tuesday, and
o Organizational Behavior from 8:15am to 11:00am and IT for Business Value from 12:45pm to 3:30pm on Wednesday.

·Breaks between classes: around 2 hours / week. Our lectures are 2:45 min long with a 15-20 minute break in the middle. I mention this separately because so much of learning – and business – happens in random conversations while on line at an on-campus coffee bar, where you’ll usually find us during these breaks.

·Study group work: 5 to 10 hours / week. We were assigned study groups of 6-7 people that we do all our group assignments with during the 1st year. My group, nicknamed Beauport, has an Aussie corporate lawyer, a Filipina social enterprise manager, an Egyptian consultant, myself (an American consultant and banker), and two Brazilians: an engineer and a private wealth manager. We meet weekly for an hour to plan how we’ll allocate group work, then meet again in smaller groups to execute each project, before coming together (usually over email) to finalize the submission. Beauport has always worked really smoothly together, with complementary skills and work styles. We could probably get our projects done a bit faster if that were the primary goal, for instance by assigning team members experienced with financial modeling to do all the Corporate Finance assignments. But our team’s main objective is to learn and support each others’ learning, so we’ll typically involve at least one person who already understands the material and one who really wants to understand it.

·Homework: 5 to 10 hours / week. Many (though not all) classes at LBS have regular pre-reading and individual assignments. Most of the learning though takes place during the lecture itself or on group projects.

·Sports: up to 7 hours / week. Volleyball teams. Squash lessons. Pilates classes. Running in neighboring Regent’s Park. One of the wonderful things about being a student is being able to do sports on teams, at leisure, and in the middle of the day rather than after an exhausting day of work and before a late dinner (or worse, at 6am!).

·Clubs and Organizations: 10 to 30 hours / week. Planning the inter-stream leap frog competition. Discussing web design for the CleanTech Challenge. Researching UK water policies as part of a joint UCL-London Business School pro bono consulting project. With dozens of active clubs and non-official groups, there’s never a shortage of interesting things to get involved in.

·Competitions: up to 20 hours / week. Competitions range from those like the CleanTech Challenge and the Global Social Venture Competition, where teams submit their own business ideas, to case competitions where a sponsoring company or organization selects a particular case to analyze and present.

·Recruiting: 2 to 30 hours / week. For finance and consulting jobs, networking and company presentations started last term. From January to mid-February their summer internship application process is in full force: researching companies, meeting LBS alumni who work there, writing thank you notes, writing cover letters, polishing resumes, preparing answers to interview questions, studying the industry… For those applying to 10 or 15 firms, recruiting is truly a full time job. Those of us looking for jobs in industry, however, have a longer and less structured recruiting process, mostly through clubs, activities, and our networks.

·Meeting your classmates: 20+ hours. Catching up at the pub, over lunch, in the hallways, with your flatmate, at weekly Sundowners, on the way back from volleyball practice, on your way to the library, at the library, on the night bus after a late night out, waiting in the halls for a presentation: talking with classmates truly is one of the best parts of an MBA, and an activity we all make plenty of time for.

·Sleeping: around 50 hours / week. Because our schedules are so flexible, it’s not hard to stay healthy and well-rested. While there’s more than enough to do to stretch yourself thin, there’s no pressure to do so here. Back in college I recall that we all fell asleep during class sometimes; that almost never happens here. Perhaps after all these years we’ve learned a bit better how to prioritize and manage our own time and resources…

Hope that helps give a feel for the MBA experience. Feel free to email me with any questions at all at lizaab.mba2012@gmail.com.

Best of luck,
Liz Aab
MBA 2012 & Forte Fellow
London Business School

Jan 23-27: Kaplan Business School Blueprint 2011 – Register Today

January 23-27, 2011

Join Kaplan GMAT for four 90-minute intensive, live online sessions and one in-person meet-and-greet with alumni. Get advice and strategies from our GMAT and b-school admissions experts–from anywhere you have an internet connection. Then connect in person in one of 15 cities at an informal meet-and-greet with MBA alumni. Decide whether to pursue an MBA; map out the perfect application; assess your resume; scope out GMAT preparation; and meet with alums from top business schools.

Forté is sponsoring the first session on January 23: "Business School – Why and Where to Go"

Visit us online to register any of the four complimentary events in the Business School Blueprint series.

Save the Date - 2011 Forte MBA Women's Conference June 10-11

Registration to open in early March - stay tuned! All women enrolled in a Forte school MBA program, or planning to enroll for Fall 2011, are invited to attend.

Strong leadership doesn’t just happen. It takes gumption and grace to make it to the top. It’s in you. But it means finding your voice, discovering what excites you, and taking the risk to go after what you really want.

Join us for the Forté Foundation’s 2011 MBA Women’s Conference June 10 and 11 in New York City and discover the strategies that will take your career from successful to extraordinary. Uncover what’s holding you back and the keys to unlocking your breakthrough-potential.

- Hear first-hand from some of today’s most remarkable business women about the leadership style and career choices that got them to where they are today

- Learn how to voice your opinion, get your contributions noticed and use self-promotion tactics to keep your career moving to the next level

- Build a network that will both support and inspire you, and gain the preparation you’ll need to lead, make a difference and have an impact

Don't miss a conference that will redefine how you look at power, change your perceptions of extraordinary leadership, and leave you with an anything-is-possible approach to your professional life.

Read and watch highlights from last year's conference.

Return to the Conference webpage in March for more information and to register.

Apply in the Sky | MBA CHALLENGE

Between application fees, test preparation, and travel costs to visit campuses, applying to MBA programs is expensive. But with their first annual MBA CHALLENGE, our friends at Apply in the Sky are giving you the opportunity to win some of it back.

The MBA CHALLENGE is free to enter, and the three winners will receive cash prizes in the amount of $200, $300 and $500 to help offset their admissions costs, or perhaps just to celebrate in style once those admissions letters finally arrive.
Here’s how the contest works:

1.You Like: Join the Apply in the Sky community by “liking” them on Facebook.

2.You Apply: Sign up for a free Apply in the Sky account and use their interface to submit responses to three short questions.

3.They Reward: Apply in the Sky will award cash prizes to the three best responses.
Especially interesting for those of you who have yet to start working on Round 3 applications, the MBA CHALLENGE also gives applicants a chance to try out the Apply in the Sky MBA planner (as featured in TechCrunch and Business Insider), which is a great asset to help you easily manage all your applications across schools.

Check out the contest website for additional information: http://applyinthesky.com/contest.php

The MBA CHALLENGE deadline is January 31st, 2011, and winners will be notified by the end of February. Good luck!

Requesting Letters of Recommendation

Letters of recommendation should be the easy part of your application, right? Unlike studying for the GMAT or writing essays, these letters aren’t actually your responsibility to complete. However, they are an important part of your application to business school, and willrequire a significant amount of time and effort from someone else (whoever is writing on your behalf). I found that getting organized and connecting with my recommendation writers early on helped me support them through this process.

Once I knew I would be applying to business school in the fall of 2009, I pulled together my list of target schools and their recommendation letter requests. Most schools request two letters from people who know you in a professional setting, and I felt very lucky that my two previous bosses each agreed to write a letter for my application. Writing rec letters can be time consuming and each school varies slightly with deadlines, process, and questions, so I pulled together an overview spreadsheet to capture all the important information for my bosses. Within the sheet I grouped similar questions together, so that my bosses could see the universe of questions they would be asked to address but also so they could (if they wanted) write one paragraph on a particular topic (strengths, weaknesses, etc) that would still address the specifics of each school. Lastly, along with this spreadsheet I also sent them some of my draft essays and resume so that, in addition to conversations about my interests and motivation for attending business school, they could see how I was positioning my candidacy and experience.

As deadlines came and went, I made sure to stay in touch with my rec letter writers through occasional email reminders about upcoming deadlines and messages of thanks for their help throughout this lengthy process! And of course, if you are inclined, a gift of some kind at the conclusion of the process can also be a way to show your appreciation for their support – though of course don’t forget, these people can be great resources once you survive the application process too, in deciding which school to attend or where to focus a career search once you’re in school. I couldn’t be happier with where I ended up – attending the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley – and I couldn’t have done it without the support from some great rec letter writers!

Dana Ledyard, Forte Fellow
Class of 2012
UC Berkeley Haas School of Business

FINALS…and Recruiting?

It’s finals time at the Tuck School of Business and everyone is hunkered down in their dorm rooms trying to decipher between a deferred tax asset and liability and seeking to understand how to properly hedge one’s stock portfolio. Three finals and two papers stand in my way before two weeks of lying on my parents’ sofa, watching terrible reality television and decompressing from thirteen weeks of intense study groups, quantitative courses and innumerable assignments to be turned into each class every day. However, after receiving an email from our career services office today, I realize my winter break plans might not be as relaxing as I once thought:
“Congratulations! You have been placed on the closed list for company X.”
Oh, right. Recruiting – the very thing I came to school to do. At Tuck, companies come on campus to interview potential interns immediately following winter break. In between getting ready for finals, students have been steadily dropping their resumes and cover letters to potential employers with the very hope of getting on a closed list. Luckily, all is not lost if a student doesn’t make a particular closed list. If recruiters want to come on campus at Tuck, they can choose half of the students they will interview (the closed list) and the other half can “bid” their way on to the interview schedule. Each student is given 1,000 points to bid on interview slots which are essentially auctioned off. This process acts as a way to level the playing field for career switchers and it is proven to work: a historically high percentage of internship offers actually go to students who use their bid points to land an interview!
Don’t get me wrong; I am absolutely thrilled to be placed on a closed list for company X, especially since this particular company is one of my top choices for a summer internship. Yet, reality has set in that I might spend more time winter break preparing fit interview questions and scouring the aisles of Target for marketing and packaging innovations to get ready for marketing cases. Moreover, as the rest of the closed lists come out, I will need to figure out on which companies I will need to bid. Since I just took my Decision Science final, maybe I should build a model and use the Risk Solver skills I developed this term to optimize my own bid strategy…

Julie L. Reimer, Forte Fellow
Class of 2012
Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth

Semester-End Reflections

Can you believe it? Less than a week until finals, then case competition, finalizing plans for a student-alumni event and WINTER BREAK! Last time I wrote, I had just begun my first year as an MBA student at Washington University in St. Louis, and now I’m almost a quarter of the way through the program! I don’t have much to say about finals except it’s always nice to know I’m in good company. I do want to tell you about the case competition that I am thrilled to participate in, along with a new and exciting student-alumni endeavor I have started.

Wash U invites several companies from around the area to submit real problems they are experiencing and then selects a couple cases that we, in our assigned groups of four, review and present our recommendations. These cases form a type of capstone for our core studies, requiring us to pull our understanding of finance, accounting, marketing, operations, etc. In particular, though, we must rely on our critical thinking capabilities, which we have enhanced throughout the semester in our analysis of numerous cases. More and more employers are requiring their associates to enhance their critical thinking skills before promoting to managerial roles. At Wash U, we have the opportunity to show select local employers our abilities, and, in return, we have the opportunity to win various prizes plus the ultimate reward of implementing our recommendation if selected.

Once the chaos of finals and the case competition subsides, I must push forward on an event geared towards all MBA students and alumni. I noticed that Wash U alumni events are organized by faculty and quite formal in nature. I found an opportunity to create a small group of students to plan and organize informal social gatherings for students and alumni without all the networking expectations of the formal events. Networking is definitely a large piece of a successful career, but there should always be some fun mixed in there, too. Our first event is scheduled for late-January, and our small group has lots of planning to do before then!

As the semester draws to a close, I find myself yearning for a nice, relaxing break but simultaneously eager to participate in the case competition and to finalize the details of the alumni social event.

Kelly Bien
Forte Fellow Class of 2012
Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis