Here in New England, you know it's fall when the air becomes cool and crisp as the leaves change color. While it's a beautiful time of year on its own, the fall is somehow missing something when we leave nature to her own devices. It's not truly fall until we pair the majesty of nature with the poetry of humanity. I'm referring, of course, to football.
To my eternal embarrassment, the powers that be at Boston University terminated football in 1997. But fear not-- the pigskin tradition continues, and the magic of fall lives on in BU's intramural flag football league. Here, about once a week, 10-15 full time MBA students gather to exhibit their guile and managerial prowess as they're chased about by tireless undergrads, all of whom seem to have just rolled out of bed for the evening kickoff.
For the past two years I've had the honor of organizing the 2013 MBA intramural football team, “SMG Tools.” Last fall marked an auspicious debut, as we won our division and made a playoff appearance. This year, we weren't so fortunate, and although we failed to qualify for the playoffs, we learned many valuable lessons about sharing, punctuality, and what it means to be a true friend.
By now we've also learned a great deal about the rules well. If you like rules, you'll love intramural flag football at BU. You've played flag football before, but not like this! Be forewarned if you're thinking about blocking or playing any kind of meaningful defense, because the eagle-eyed undergrad officials will call you on it. Hilariously, they'll also fail to call pretty obvious things like actual tackles.
Once you learn the rules (again, this takes about two seasons) and more importantly, that no one, especially the officials, really knows or understands them all (this part takes about 5 minutes), intramural football is actually really fun. Last fall it was a great way to unwind, however temporarily from the madness of the Integrated Project, and this year it's been a great way to stay in touch with classmates who no longer share the same schedule.
Now that it's all over, I'm not sure how fall next year, or any future fall, will really be complete. I'll manage, somehow, if only because I know that Sunday evenings, down on Nickerson Field, there will be another group of future MBAs out there chasing down undergrads, confronting befuddled referees, and winning games, all while remembering one thing:
NO TOUCHING.
Sam Cecala is a second year MS-MBA. Previously he's worked in entertainment, specialized publishing, and family governance. He once spent half an hour as a guest on a talk radio show alongside former Washington DC mayor Marion Barry and appears in the final episode of Arrested Development.
What exactly does it mean to be an International MBA student at BU? People ask me this question all the time; mostly because they assume it means a class made up of students from outside the US and yet, here I am – your ‘typical’ American. So then what does it mean?
Untamed curiosity. Adventure-seeking. Insatiable wanderlust. Desire to make a difference.
These are the words and phrases that come to mind when I think about my IMBA classmates. When I first started this program less than a year ago, I had never left the United States but that didn’t mean I lacked curiosity and adventure-seeking. In fact, the newness of the experiences made me even more open to the lessons I could learn – and my classmates also helped me expand my perspectives, from the cultural and historic to the culinary and social.
View of the Forbidden City
One of my greatest memories in China happened by accident. After an exhausting day walking through the Forbidden City, two classmates and I decided to climb to the peak of Jingshan Park where you can get a view of the entire Forbidden City – truly breathtaking. As we started our descent, we could hear the sound of people singing but we couldn’t tell where it was coming from. We decided to walk down the mountain the hard way, towards the sound. We found ourselves surrounded by various groups of people all over this public park. Some singing. Some playing instruments. Others dancing. I had never seen anything like it. I was so taken by the sights and sounds that I found myself joining in a traditional dance along with my classmates. What made this so powerful was that I was completely immersed in the culture; I had put my camera down and participated rather than observed and truly connected with the culture around me.
My experience in China along with the daily learning experiences from my classmates has only intensified my desire for more. I now realize that I still have so much to learn about the world: the people of the world and how their interactions differ from my norm; the corporations of the world and how they interact within their own country’s political systems as well as within the global economy; and how I can use my unique set of skills and experiences to make a difference.
Students enjoy a bike ride in Shanghai
My next adventure begins in January when I set out for Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as part of a field seminar with BU. This trip allows students to understand the changing role of sustainable business development and corporate social responsibility in emerging economies. I’m excited for another unique set of social, cultural, and business learning experiences.
When I graduate next spring from the one-year International MBA program, I will have been to China, Japan, Brazil, and a yet-to-be-named country for spring break (Iceland in March is a good idea, right?). In addition, I will have completed a consulting project for a nonprofit currently supporting improvement in health, nutrition, and education of communities in Guatemala.
So what does it really mean to be an International MBA student at BU? Having a desire to learn and understand people, cultures, and business practices of all types while creating value for the world. My IMBA class is a microcosm of the world in and of itself with classmates from Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and North and South America. Despite our differences, the intense three-month bonding experience in China has made us a family and being part of it has changed my life.
Kim is an International MBA student with experience in operations improvement and growth strategy. If you ever want to go biking around Boston, Kim is the one to talk to. Just don’t try keeping up.
From October 18-21 MBA students from Boston University and from across the country gathered at Boston’s Seaport World Trade Center for the 2012 Reaching Out MBA Conference: Together, Building Community.
Externally, ROMBA might have appeared to be your run-of-the mill business school conference. It was well funded and attended by top universities and firms from across the country with an impressive array of heavily subsidized food and beverages. BU’s School of Management showed up with our expected leadership and volunteerism, as multiple Cohort Q (SMG’s LGBT association) members helped organize activities. On Friday, I coordinated the nonprofit breakout session, Brave New World: Charting a Path for Social Impact in the 21st Century. On Saturday, Stacey Sharer (MBA 2014) led a nonprofit consulting case workshop for business students to provide recommendations to a local nonprofit, and the Feld Career Center recruited at the pre-MBA fair. Each morning of the conference, Tim Pennell(MBA 2013) rose early to coordinate sponsored runs.
So, while ROMBA may have lookedlike your run-of-the-mill conference, ROMBA was actually a much more momentous event than a great line up of recruiters (BCG, McKinsey, Bain) and panels (consulting, marketing, human capital). ROMBA was significant in that it demonstrated the enormous progress our country has made towards equality in the last decade.
How did the conference demonstrate progress? The Reaching Out MBA conference is the annual national gathering of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) graduate business students. Why is this significant? Not only are LGBT employment protections still nonexistent in 29 states, but a decade ago the idea of openly gay senior executives was unheard of. However, Reaching Out is a small part of a groundswell of corporate support for LGBT equality. At a national level, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos contributed $2.5 million to support gay marriage, which was on the ballot in Washington. UPS is among a number of firms defunding Boy Scouts of America for policies that ban gay troop leaders and scouts. As companies put resources behind their commitment to LGBT equality, progress becomes attainable.
Solutions to global challenges like the human rights of the LGBT community will only come if we are able to address them across sectors. And on November 6, as the country experienced a landslide for LGBT equality (marriage passed in three states and the first openly gay congresswoman was elected), I found myself thinking about ROMBA and how firms like Walt Disney Co., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Teach for America, and Unilever are playing an important role in this process. Reaching Out demonstrates and is part of this progress. Cohort Q and members of the SMG community are privileged to see and participate in this history.
Jessica Friesen believes in cross-sector solutions to social change, is a member of BU's MBA Class of 2013, and is enrolled in the PNP program. Born and raised in Southeast Asia, Jessica is Co-President of SMG's LGBT association, Cohort Q.
More than 200 BU MBA students attended the annual Halloween party at GameOn in Fenway on Saturday night. The popular event was co-hosted by the Graduate Student Council and the Cohort Cup committee. Students dressed in costumes of all varieties, many vying to win the highly competitive Cohort Cup costume contest.
Where's Cohort B?
Winning Best Group Costume was Cohort B with over 30 members all dressed as Waldo. Most Creative went to the "Real House Wives of Mitt Romney," also known as Caroline Hennigan and Naz Durakoglu. Taking home Best Individual Costume was Tim Chanoux with his rendition of "The Old Man” from the animated movie “Up.” Over $300 in Visa gift cards and a $100 voucher to GameOn were given to the winners. The even was a smashing success-- a good time was had by all!Do you have costume ideas that are better than these?Well, there’s always next year!
Patrick Reilley previously served 6 yrs in the U.S. Navy and is currently a second year student in the full-time MBA program with a concentration in Finance.
In today’s world, business and networking go hand-in-hand. Then, what’s the best way for students to network, especially with Wall Street finance firms, who cannot directly interact with BU students due to location differences. Of course, you go out to Wall Street itself and meet personally with finance professionals. That’s where MBA Finance Club’s New York Trek comes in handy. With the help of various BU alumni, the MBA Finance club schedules this annual trek to various Wall Street firms where students get an opportunity to interact with alumni as well as other professionals, learn about different areas of finance, and build relationships.
As the VP in charge of Treks for the MBA Finance club, I had the opportunity to organize the this year’s New York trek. The process started in back in February when the current Finance club leadership took the reigns from the outgoing leadership, and we immediately began contacting BU alumni at select firms to gauge their interest and availability for this year’s trek. I received tremendous help from my classmate and Finance club’s co-president Shan Guo (SMG, 2013) in this formidable task. Shan contacted alumni at multiple firms to initiate the conversations and we continued to follow up throughout the spring and summer. In the end, we were able to arrange to meet with five companies on October 18th and 19th, and 22 club members made the trip down to New York to participate in the trek.
Students and alumni at Goldman Sachs.
Our first stop was Goldman Sachs where we were joined by five BU alumni from the firm. Students had a very interactive session learning about alumni job profiles as well as current industry trends and news, from Dodd-Frank implications to the presidential election to the fiscal cliff. From there, we moved on to Citigroup. We had an awesome alumni presence there as twelve alumni joined us and discussed their diverse experiences, which included investment banking, corporate banking, sales and trading, and leveraged finance, among others. With such a productive day, students were ready to make more connections while unwinding a little bit in the evening at the Alumni reception, which was co-hosted by the MBA Finance Club and BU SMG Alumni Relations office. Here, we spoke with consultants from Cognizant Consulting about their financial services consulting practice and job requirements. We spent rest of the evening at the reception as networking continued among students and several more alumni from different companies who graciously joined us there and shared their stories.
Alumni at the evening reception.
Day one of the trek was quite successful and we all were very excited for the second day of the trek, which brought exposure to different sets of companies. Students arrived in the morning at Lincolnshire Management, a Private Equity firm, where Mr. Mike Lyons, Senior Managing Director and BU alumnus, shared his experiences and commented on the intricacies and nuances of private equity business. This was definitely a unique experience for students to hear firsthand from such a high profile business leader and to learn more about unexplored areas of private equity. Our next destination was Barclay's Capital, which has regularly hosted BU students and has also recruited from these treks in past years, and students learned more about the world of investment banking from alumni at Barclay's. After such an eventful couple of days, the trek was not over quite yet: We had one more post-lunch stopover at PwC Advisory Services. This again was an interesting experience, as we met with professionals from areas of Asset Management, Insurance, and Banking and Capital Markets. The fact that our alumni contacts brought so many non-alumni professionals for the session is truly a testament to the commitment of our alumni to the BU community.
I consider the trek to be an overwhelming success. Students visited six different companies in areas of Investment Banking, Consulting and Private Equity; networked with more than 45 business professionals in two days; and got exposure to varied specializations within the Finance industry. I myself also learned important lessons in organizing such events from start to finish and will strive to keep improving these treks by including an even more diverse group of companies to enhance students’ experiences. I would like to thank my fellow MBA Finance Club committee members for their help in preparing for the trek,the BU SMG Alumni Relations office for organizing the alumni reception, the Feld Career Center staff for getting us ready and accompanying us on the trek, and most importantly, all of our Alumni who committed so much of their time and energy in meeting with students and sharing their experiences. I look forward to the upcoming trek!
Priyanka Sharma is a 2nd year General MBA student concentrating in Finance and has experience in finance and technology industries. Priyanka was born and raised in India and enjoys learning about different cultures and their cuisines.
Interested in Investment Management? Boston University’s MBA Investment Club has been actively engaged in investment discussions and activities this year.
The Investment Club has started a stock simulation using MarketWatch.com and will run it throughout the school year. The stock simulation currently has over 40 players and rankings are placed based on the current market value of their portfolios. The simulation is similar to a typical e-brokerage account website and allows participants to research and buy stocks. The simulation includes 1st year MBAs, 2nd year MBAs, and MS Math/Finance students, as well as BU Alumni. Students start with $100,000 of virtual money that they can put to work to practice their investment strategies and enhance their investment knowledge in an educational environment. The club will reward the students whose portfolio values rank in the top three at the end of November 2012, February 2013, and April 2013 with a small gift. Currently, the top three portfolios have values of $113,437, $105,700, and $105,546.
In addition to the stock simulation, the club managed the MBA Investment Fund, which is a real portfolio with real money. The fund provides an opportunity for students to take on stock analyst roles, provide stock research for stock picks in their respective industries, and discuss stock pitches in front of club membership. As a club, we will evaluate the portfolio and decide as a group to take a position in a particular stock presented by the stock analyst. The fund provides us with a real opportunity and real experience for students who want to build their resume and relevant investment experiences. We hope to provide a place for student to develop their investment skills and philosophies during their time here at Boston University, and are always looking for new ways to accomplish this goal.
Masato Muso is a 2nd year General MBA concentrating in Marketing. He is a Los Angeles native and worked in political campaigns, education, and in management consulting before coming to Boston. As a financially conscious individual, he has been an active value investor for the past several years, and is working towards investment certifications. As President of the club, he hopes to foster an open environment to explore your “investor identity” and provide opportunities to hone your investor approach, tactics, and philosophy.
What happens when you get leaders across BU graduate programs and campuses together to plan an event?Over 800 RSVPs across 5 different graduate programs; as well as collaboration, communication and endless networking opportunities among students who bare the BU crest to professionally excel and find ways to create value for the world.In our increasingly pluralistic world faced with challenging financial and resource constraints, there is a rising need for inter-disciplinary problem solving and collaboration.The first step towards getting there is creating a space that encourages BU students to meet and interact.
On Friday, October 12th students from BU’s Graduate School of Management (SMG), School of Public Health (SPH), Graduate School of Medical Sciences (GMS), School of Dental Medicine (SDM) and School of Medicine (MED) met, ate and engaged in dialogue at Boston’s Gypsy Bar. It was a great turnout! For the first time this year, student councils from each of the schools met with each other and talked about upcoming events. Student governments from SMG, SPH and GMS subsidized food for the event. Students filled out nametags to identify themselves and the school they were representing. For the next four hours there was chatting, eating and eventually dancing among BU’s graduate students.
Spearheading the event were student leaders [positioned from left to right]: Maya Tatsuno (MBA’13), Kate Goodmon (GMS ’15), Emily Rath (MPH ’13), Taiwo Odusanya (MPH ’13), Neil Yajnik (MS/MBA ’13) and Dana Connolly (MBA ’13) [not pictured]. Planning began during the summer and resulted in weekly meetings and commitments from organizers to best represent the desires of their student bodies. Coordinating the event was no easy feat, but it was well worth it!
So you ask, what was it worth? I could attempt to calculate an ROI, but you would be missing the point. Graduate students pursuing an education are different than undergraduates. We do not get thrown into orientation together or shared dorms, which force us to interact. Some of us are career or industry switchers, while others pursue a planned path to get the right certification or skills to be successful in their line of work. A good percentage of our student bodies work part-time, have families or have their 5-year plan laid out. The students who attended this specific event will become fine clinicians, scientists, educators, policy-makers or businessmen and women, yet we could go through our whole graduate experience without once interacting with a student from another BU program.
As a future alumna of BU, I’d like to look back on my 6000-mile move as the best opportunity for me to hone my passion and skills, discover new career opportunities, build a network of diverse and talented people, and become a proud representative of the BU brand. There is no doubt that in my personal quest to find cost-effective solutions for delivering quality healthcare that I’m going to work on a team of stakeholders with expertise in the various fields represented at this event. So you ask, what was it worth? My answer is: A sense of pride and a sense of belonging to a brighter, greater, more cohesive BU community.
Maya Tatsuno is a 2nd year MBA/MPH student concentrating in Health Policy and Management, and with experience in health plan operations and consulting.Maya was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, and so she spends most of her time in the winter months trying to find warm nooks with sunlight.
This is a very exciting year for BU and the health sector program as we are hosting the 1st annual health sector case competition, which will occur on November 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. This is one of the many initiatives Dean Freeman has spearheaded and a huge coup for our school. BU is partnering with DePuy Synthes Spine (recently merged), a Johnson & Johnson company. The competition is partly modeled after the Tech Strategy Case Competition, which BU has successfully hosted for the better part of a decade.
Case competitions present students with a business problem to solve. The cases are usually around ten to twenty pages with exhibits. Students have a predetermined amount of time (24 hours for the health care case competition) to analyze the case, develop solutions, and present their proposal. Business professionals, including senior leadership from DePuy, then evaluate the teams based on the quality of their work, the novelty and feasibility of their proposed solutions, and the presentations themselves. Students utilize their newly acquired MBA skills and leverage their past professional experience in developing their presentations. Case competitions are great practice for working in a high functioning team to deliver a quality solution under a very tight timetable. For this competition, the top three teams receive cash prizes of $20,000, $7,500, and $5,000, respectively.
BU is hosting an impressive list of schools for this competition. In addition to the BU team, teams from CEIBS (China Europe International Business School); Frankfurt School of Finance and Management; Fuqua School of Business, Duke University; Harvard Business School, Harvard University; Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad; IPADE Business School, Universidad Panamericana, Mexico; Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University; Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto; Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College and The Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science will be in attendance. Needless to say, this competition is a fantastic opportunity to network with students from other graduate schools and judges from the business world.
In order to select a team to represent BU, we hosted an internal competition on the weekend of October 6th. Eight teams participated in a format very similar to the November competition format. The internal selection round gave teams a chance to work together in the competitive setting, and was a good trial run for the planning committee too.
This has been an amazing experience for me personally. I’m project managing a team of faculty and students to put on this event and we’ve been working since last April. It’s definitely been challenging balancing my internship over the summer and my school work since September with my duties for the case competition. I’m glad to say that I have been able to apply much of my learning from my first year at BU, from operations to organizational behavior. My previous work experience and summer internship definitely helped equip me with an understanding of how to drive this process. With two weeks to go, we’re really in the thick of it, and all I can say is that I’m very excited for November.
Sam Schweizer is a 2ndyear HSM/MBA student with experience in health care recruiting. He completed an internship at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts over the summer. Sam loves planning events for his fellow students including ski weekends and golf outings, and he even does bachelor parties.
Besides the obvious reasons to attend Boston University's MBA program, such as our highly ranked healthcare sector management program and the strong alumni network, many students have found beneficial the positive network effects of living and working in Greater Boston. Already the recipient of numerous accolades, the city was recently suggested by a few online sites to be the nation's number one biotech-cluster (a title previously held by San Francisco). With BU's close ties to life science companies ranging from one-week-old startups to fortune 500 pharmaceutical giants, this new title is really no surprise to the many students that have used BU's relationships to further their own career development.
Something I've noticed in my short tenure as the President of Boston University's BioBusiness Organization (BBO) is the extremely high level of experience and knowledge possessed by our club members, and this is not just limited to those students with prior work experience in the sector. For students without previous experience, foundational industry knowledge can almost be picked up through osmosis as life science companies seem to permeate and surround Boston University. And as the BBO is a student-led club for those interested in the biotech, pharma, device, and diagnostic industries, Boston really is the perfect environment in which to study for an MBA. With so many life science connections, speakers for BBO events are never in short supply! For instance, we just had the first of a four-part Lunch with Industy series in which a BU alum/local professional comes to campus for an informal meet-and-greet with students interested in the product-side of healthcare. Our first guest was Justin Bush from Inspiration Pharmaceuticals. Justin is using his recent degree from BU to lead the marketing efforts at a company dedicated to providing real and meaningful improvements to the lives of patients suffering from hemophilia. In a low-key lunch format, students were able to ask Justin questions such as What are the best kinds of roles for a recent MBA grad? and How should an MBA student plan a career among companies both large and small?
The Lunch with Industry series is just a hint of the developments and upcoming events for the BBO. This past summer, Brian Hannah (BBO’s VP of Marketing), in his spare time after interning at Genzyme, completely redeveloped the club's branding and website to better reflect our mission and purpose for existence (check out the new site here: http://smgworld.bu.edu/clubbiobus/).
With a mission to provide value to the students interested in the industry side of healthcare, we're also planning several company treks for the 2012-2013 scholastic year as well as repeating our annual development workshop, the CareerStudio. This year's CareerStudio will again feature speakers such as Lauren Solano from Propel Careers and career coaching by Matt Casey as well as representatives from local biotech's to provide background on the attributes of a well-qualified candidate for post-MBA positions. With BU being such a well-known and well-respected source of MBA talent, finding quality career coaches and industry representatives for our club events has not proven to be a challenge.
So in conclusion, all these points highlight the benefit of pursuing an MBA in the Boston area, and especially at Boston University. The incredible amount of talent within a stone's throw, the sheer number of startups in the area, and the major biotech players in and near Greater Boston confirm the notion of Boston being the nation's number one biotech cluster. But really though, for BU students that have long taken advantage of the Boston area and all that BU has to offer, such new rankings are really not much of a surprise.
David Spotts is a 2nd year HSM/MBA student with experience in engineering and marketing in the life sciences. When he's not studying, working, sleeping, or networking at Cornwall's, he enjoys trying to see if he really can throw a stone and hit a biotech.
In July, when my classmate Mike Ben-Asher (GSM, ’13) texted me to ask if I wanted to represent SMG in an MBA soccer tournament at Yale University, my first thought was, “How did this guy get my phone number?” But then my second thought was, “Sure! Where do I sign up?”
From there, I joined up with Mike and Luis Marin (GSM, ’13) to start organizing our team. After a couple months of frantic scrambling, we managed to book our spot in the tournament, get funding from the graduate council (thanks, guys, and I’m not just saying that to suck up for the next time we need money from you), secure a uniform sponsor (LAMBAA), purchase some uniforms to slap that sponsor’s logo on, and assemble a squad of 16 players (first- and second-year students plus a few SMG alumni).
Andres Biguria dribbles past the defense.
With all that taken care of, we were ready to play some ball. A week before the tournament, we played a training match against the MBA team from Babson. The results were discouraging – we struggled mightily and ultimately lost 5-2. I thought of excuses to give myself some hope that we could still do well at Yale . We only had one substitute…we were playing on their home field, on some horrendous, 1970s-style AstroTurf…we were still reeling from Heidi Klum’s breakup with Seal . But in the end, I was pretty sure we just didn’t have it.
A week later, with our low expectations in tow, we headed down to New Haven, CT, for the Yale MBA Cup. We arrived on Friday, September 21, a day before the start of the tournament. As is customary for finely tuned athletes, our team prepared for the next day’s matches with pizza and socializing, after which the youngsters stayed out a bit longer and the oldsters retired to the hotel.
Finally, Saturday arrived, and it was time to play. The field of sixteen was divided into four pools of four teams, with the teams in each pool playing a round-robin on Saturday in an effort to secure one of the pool’s two spots in the single-elimination phase of the tournament, on Sunday.
Our pool included Virginia’s Darden School of Management, Yale School of Management’s alumni team, and Columbia Business School. Our first match was scheduled for the inhumane hour of 8:30 am against Darden. Battling our opponent, as well as sleep deprivation and the challenge of playing on a field that resembled a potato farm on the surface of the moon, we managed to score an unexpected 2-1 victory on the strength of goals from Kyle Adelman (GSM, ’14) and Sevag Khatchadourian (GSM, ’14).
This sport is too easy for Kyle Adelman, so he attempts to make it more difficult by dribbling without looking.
So we improbably held first place in our group as we set out to face the defending champions, Yale Alumni. Yale pinned us in our own end for most of the early going, and they were rewarded with a 2-0 halftime lead. Early in the second half, though, Andres Biguria (SMG, ’13) smashed home a volley from close range to make it 2-1. Energized by the goal, we furiously attacked for the remainder of the second half, but we simply couldn’t find the tying goal. Then, with a minute left, we conceded a third and final goal from a penalty kick. Despite the 3-1 loss, we fought admirably when it would have been easy to fold after falling behind by two goals in the first half. The defeat left us in a tricky spot for our final match against Columbia. Although mathematically eliminated following a 1-0 loss to Darden, Columbia still wanted a say in determining who would advance. They stormed out of the gate against us and eventually took the lead, converting a (highly debatable) penalty kick to make the score 1-0. Matters got progressively worse from there, as we missed chance after chance and our frustration mounted. Finally, with 12 minutes left, we broke through with a goal from Luis Marin (SMG, ’13). Then, 5 minutes later, Adelman scored the goal of the tournament – a bomb from 20 yards that found the top corner of the net – to seal the victory.
Luis Marin celebrates after a hard-earned victory.
All that was left then was for Yale Alumni to play Darden in the last match in our pool. If Yale won or tied, we would advance to the next round, with Darden finishing behind us. The transitive property (Yale > BU, BU > Darden, so Yale > Darden, right?) suggested that we were a lock to advance. The reality was quite different, though, as Darden pulled out a 1-0 victory, creating a three-way tie in the standings among Darden, Yale, and us. We came out on the short end of the tiebreaker (goal difference, or goals scored minus goals allowed), and so despite having won twice and lost only once, we were eliminated from the tournament.
Us, back when we thought we were going to advance to the second round.
That was disappointing, but perhaps it was for the best. After three 60-minute games in the span of a day, “get up at 7:30 am tomorrow and run around for at least another hour” was low on our list of things we’d like to do (top of the list: “lie very still for several hours and try to fight off full-body muscle cramps”). Instead, we retreated to our hotel, grabbed dinner, socialized with opposing players at the official tournament mixer/dance jam/super-sweet 16 party, and called it a night.
The whole experience was outstanding. To a man, our squad was a pleasure to hang out with, and everyone battled like a champ on the field. We’ll be taking another crack at this when we play in the MBA World Cup at Dartmouth in April.
Dave Danese is a second-year student with experience in marketing and strategy within the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. He knows that the ball is round and enjoys a well-executed catenaccio.
Case competitions present students with a business problem to solve. The cases are usually around ten to twenty pages with exhibits. Students have a predetermined amount of time (24 hours for the health care case competition) to analyze the case, develop solutions, and present their proposal. Business professionals, including senior leadership from DePuy, then evaluate the teams based on the quality of their work, the novelty and feasibility of their proposed solutions, and the presentations themselves. Students utilize their newly acquired MBA skills and leverage their past professional experience in developing their presentations. Case competitions are great practice for working in a high functioning team to deliver a quality solution under a very tight timetable. For this competition, the top three teams receive cash prizes of $20,000, $7,500, and $5,000, respectively. 
