Graduate Student Blog
Tips for putting together your best B-school application
Post By:
Meg Meyer
MBA/MPH Candidate, 2012
Check out the School of Management website. There is a lot of information about requirements, the current class profile, and how to visit us on the Graduate Admissions page.
Come visit BU in person. There is no better way to get a feel for the School of Management than to come see for yourself. You can visit a class, have coffee with a current student, and/or attend an Information Session to get a better idea of the programs.
Watch videos on our youtube channel. These kinds of videos will give you a good idea about what life as an MBA is like, what professors are doing, and what the different specialties are that we offer.
Figure out what kind of job and life you want on the other side of your MBA. The admissions team wants to know that a BU MBA will benefit you and help you move your career where you want it to go. If you can convince them that an MBA at BU is the missing link between where you are now and your dream job, it will greatly strengthen your application. Don’t be worried if you’re a career switcher, just explain your reasoning.
Make your essays BU-specific. After you have learned what the program offers, be sure to make your personal statement and other essays BU-specific. It’s really tempting to use the same essays for multiple schools but more often than not, the admission committee can tell if you’re forcing it!
Proof read. (enouigh said)
Think of your application holistically (because that is what the admissions team does). Everyone has strengths and weaknesses in different areas but the many parts of the application give you a chance to create a well-rounded picture of yourself. We do not have set minimum admission requirements, but we do have target ranges that we look for in certain areas of the application, including GMAT score, undergraduate grade point average, and quality and number of years of full-time work experience. The best way to assess the competitiveness of your application is to compare yourself to our class profile. Strengths in some areas may compensate for weaknesses in other areas and if there are any parts of your work or academic history that you thing need explaining, feel free to do so! For example, if your undergrad GPA is lower than you would have hoped for but you really picked it up during your last few semesters, you might want to explain what happened in an optional essay.
Give your recommenders plenty of time. It never looks good to rush someone that you are wanting a recommendation out of. It’s also a nice idea to thank them formally after. As an idea, I sent my recommenders BU mugs as a small thank you gift!
Practice for your interview and come prepared. If you get asked in for an interview, try to think of answers to questions you might get and practice what you might say. Be sure to bring a copy of your resume as well and be comfortable explaining everything on it. Good luck!
Me
g is a second year MBA/MPH student studying Global Health Management. She is also the President of the new Global Health and Development Association. You may find her running around Boston with a backpack on or challenging people to dance-offs.
What will you make of your time at BU’s School of Management?
Post By:
Felipe Spinel MBA Candidate, 2012
Two years go by in the blink of an eye and here I am, done with my third semester and feeling a sudden desire for the program to last much longer. While trying to compile a list of the things that have made this one of the most exciting times of my life I came across the following:
World. Meeting people from all over the world was inspiring and eye-opening. The cultural differences were initially a puzzle and, later on, a source of amusement. For this reason, my wife and I decided that our summer internship was going to be a three-month “expedition” through Asia. Our trip took us to amazing places like the base camp of Mount Everest, the colored cities, palaces and forts in India’s Rajasthan, the crowded streets of Mumbai, paradise beaches in Cambodia, the Mekong River in southern Laos, the ancient temples of Angkor and the chaotic, sizzling cities of Vietnam.
Friends. Not only have the academic qualities of my classmates permanently raised the bar in class but also their diverse background and personal qualities have created strong, long-lasting friendships. The Cohorts have made it feel like a family.
Learning. Most of the best professors in my entire life I have met while at BU. Their styles vary incredibly but each one of them has special characteristics that make them outstanding. Whether it was their rigorousness, kindness, counseling, experience or simply fun and innovative teaching style, their unique ways definitely made my classes so much more enjoyable.
Boston. Finally, besides being one of the most innovative cities in the world, Beantown is essentially a huge campus. It is the Amazon jungle of knowledge, a bubbling pot where curiosity, ideas and science meet business and opportunities. I have had the chance to spend time on amazing things like setting up an electric car competition with fellow students from MIT, participate in (and win) BU’s Smart Lighting challenge, attend talks of several heads of state, speak to several CEO’s and intern for one of the most exciting Cleantech startups in the country. Networking events are non-stop, entrepreneurship is in the air, and serendipitous connections have happened to me in pubs, coffee shops or random parties at friend’s places. 
Electric Car Competition
Mass Challenge Dinner with the Governor
BU has offered me all the elements to write my own story, what will YOU make out of your time at BU’s School of Management?
Felipe Spinel is a second year MBA student concentrating in strategy and business analysis. He has worked for companies in the IT and Oil&Gas industries and is passionate for the outdoors, mountain biking, entrepreneurship and the environment.
Alternative housing: have you considered living on a boat?
Post By:
Carl Palme
MS-MBA Candidate, 2012
Life on a boat is fanta
stic! You get to live next to the ocean (literally) and are rocked to sleep every night. There is a great community in the marina and Charlestown is a great town. Even if you live on a small sailboat, the marina has showers, bathrooms, a mailroom, washers, dryers, grills, and even a covered pool for the winter months. The following is a satellite picture of the marina, and the map shows the distance (only three miles) from the marina to the Boston University Graduate School of Management.
There are several ways of getting to BU from the marina. On a nice day you can walk or take a bike, and on other days you can ride the subway. The closest “T” station is North Station on the Green Line. During the summer, life on a boat is a breeze. You come home to friendly people, and the smell of a sizzling grill. During the fall, the excitement winds down a little, but the Boston Bruins start the season and are just 10 minutes away. Here is a picture of me holding a faux Stanley Cup with the marina and the TD Garden behind me.
During the fall, the summer boats pack up and leave, and only the live-aboards stick around. There are approximately 100 of us that live on boats yearlong. The fall is beautiful in Charlestown. The leaves start changing colors, the days are shorter, and the breeze that you get from the ocean is always refreshing. Also, the sunsets are amazing as you can see from this picture. 
As the winter approaches, people start winterizing their boats. This includes shrink-wrapping it, adding antifreeze, and tying your boat well so you can brave the Nor’easter storms. The shrink-wrap is placed over the boat for several reasons. For starters, it keeps the snow off the surface of the boats. It also creates additional space on the top deck. And lastly, it creates a sort of Green House effect where the sun shines in during the day and the heat is trapped inside the shrink-wrap so your boat is nice and warm for the evening.
The winter isn’t so bad. Contrary to what people think, it is actually warmer than the mainland. The friendly staff at the marina keeps the snow and ice off the docks and your neighbors will invite you for a winter warmer. This picture shows what the marina looks like during the winter. All of the boats look like tents from the shrink-wrapping. As spring approaches, people like me tend to get overly eager and remove the shrink-wrap way too soon. I usually set up the grill on the top deck and start grilling during the first weeks of March. Finally, the warm months return and life is beautiful once again. It is definitely an interesting life, and one worth having and talking about. There are many housing alternatives in Boston, but few so interesting. The MBA Experience is so much fun, and I never thought I could make it even more interesting until I jumped on the opportunity of living on a boat.
Carl Pa
lme is a 2nd Year MS-MBA with experience in Entrepreneurship, Operations, Marketing, and Boat Living. Most recently, he has been sighted sporting a mustache for Movember.
Follow @carlpalme on Twitter.
The Cohort Cup
Post By:
Akshay Shah
MS-MBA Candidate, 2012
With all the time students spend on classwork, it can be easy to forget that you're allowed to have a little fun, too. Between classes and the Integrated Project, there's the Cohort Cup to help you meet your friends, meet new people, and unwind. The Cohort Cup is a competition between the cohorts, started by Dean Nolan in the mid-2000s. We hold various events throughout the year, such as:
- Cheers with Professors, where you can meet your professors outside the classroom at Cornwall's -- the local bar for BU MBA students
- Karaoke night
- Trivia night
- Basketball and soccer tournaments
- Pumpkin carving contest and Halloween party
- March madness brackets
- Art show
- Talent contest
Each event is an opportunity for you to meet your fellow classmates and earn points based on attendance and performance (if applicable). The first objective is to get people out and mingling, letting people get to know each other outside the context of school. The second objective is that by having events that require preparation, such as the sporting events or talent, people who normally wouldn't work together can do so towards a common goal. It is before and during these events that clubs form, relationships are forged, and memories are made. Though it can get pretty competitive at times (we are, after all, MBA students), I've found that attending Cohort Cup events is a great way to get to know your classmates both within your cohort and outside it. It helps that we provide free drinks and appetizers at some of the events. As if the camaraderie, drinks, food, and competition weren't enough, the winning cohort gets a huge party thrown for them at the end of the year to celebrate, with food, drinks, and T-shirts commemorating the win!
Of course, the Cohort Cup events aren't the only social events for you to enjoy. The various student clubs hold Thirsty Thursdays at nearby bars, if you're looking for a little more variety. The Graduate Student Council also holds formal galas at the end of each semester. You're also free to organize something with your new-found friends, as well. And finally, you can always stop by Cornwall's. There are usually a few MBAs hanging out there at any time, "practicing" for the next event.
Akshay Shah is a 2nd year MS-MBA concentrating in Strategy & Business Analysis. He is on the Cohort Cup Committee, on the Graduate Student Council, and an Admissions Ambassador. Follow @aushah on Twitter.
Beautiful Boston
Photography By:
Happy Holidays
Post By:
Taylor Marge
MSMF Candidate, 2013
There is a cold chill in the air and Christmas music can be heard all around. This means one thing, finals of course. As the semester comes to an end the Math Finance students are all busy preparing for finals and wishing the second year students good luck as they venture out into the working world. Although our professors keep us busy with assignments school isn’t the only thing on our mind. As the semester comes to a close the time to look for internships is upon us. This can seem like a daunting challenge but luckily we do not have to take it on alone. The Feld Career Center has been helping us all semester with our resumes, cover letters and focusing our internship search criteria. Now they are offering information sessions on how to research potential employers and search for companies in which we are interested. Boston University has many resources to help us in our search from databases with company information such as size, location and type of employment to feedback from alumni who have worked in the industry before. The resources offered at the School of Management are invaluable to us, especially since many of my classmates do not have full time work experience any information related to the company or the industry. The Feld Career Center in conjunction with the Pardee Library (The School of Management’s library) does a great job teaching us how to utilize all of these resources.
In addition to our hard work this semester we have also taken some time to enjoy ourselves. Most recently the MSMF program sponsored a holiday party for all of its students and professors. It was a wonderful opportunity to chat with classmates and professors in a relaxed setting. We were also joined by Dean Ken Freeman who wished the second year students luck as they begin their careers after graduating from the MSMF program. The holiday party was a much appreciated celebration after a hard semester of work. A special thanks to the Graduate Programs Office for organizing our holiday party.
Happy Holidays!
Taylor Marge is a first year Math Finance student with a background in engineering. He excels at summarizing articles for co-workers and remembering inconsequential information.
A Hungry First Year MBA
Ryan (far right) enjoying a bite with classmates during pre-term
Post by:
Ryan Sosin
MBA Candidate, 2013
My name is Ryan Sosin and I am a hungry first-year MBA student.
Boston may not be the culinary center of the world, but food is definitely at the center of my BU MBA experience. Going to school a stones throw from Kenmore Square, a short walk to Fenway and easy T rides to downtown, Brookline and Allston provides plenty of options to eat.
You will hear during your MBA, no matter where you go, that networking is just as important as your classes. This is very true, but people often mistake social events as the study guide and not a good meal with good friends. Food gives you the brilliance to turn around your selected Integrated Project product the night before the mid-term deliverables are due; it sustains you during the two days you spend in close quarters with three other people for PharmaSim (a 3-day marketing simulation) and most importantly, it is the ultimate networking activity.
During pre-term, people travel in packs while the smaller social groups are still shaking out. One day, about 25 of us piled into the Kenmore Square Qdoba at the same time to chow down on burritos. While we talked about where we were from and what we think of Boston, Qdoba turned into a five-star restaurant/mess hall. We had pushed all the tables together and the staff was bringing us chips and dip. It was a classy affair!
There is also an event called “Thirsty Thursday” just about every week throughout the year. Most of them are at the unofficial BU Graduate School of Management (GSM) bar, Cornwall's. A short walk from class, Cornwall's is the site of many debriefings after exams, presentations or data cases. While many choose to use their free drink ticket to get a pint first, the smart kids are chowing down on the free nachos and cheese sticks before others get to them.
My classmates and I have dumped an untold fortune into the coffers of Breadwinners and Starbucks, a café and coffee shop located on the second floor of the School of Management building, during our first months at BU. There is something very comforting about getting a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from Peggy before frantically trying to wrap your head around free cash flows in the graduate student lounge.
By the time you reach Thanksgiving, the bonds with your classmates have grown fairly strong. Those who did not travel home for the American holiday held a potluck dinner with food from all over the world. They watched football, ate oysters and played cards with a giant deck that could double as plywood.
Ryan 
Sosin is a 1st Year MBA with experience in collegiate athletics and a life-long dream of being an astronaut. You can find him ordering a PB&J sandwich at Breadwinners.
Follow @thefosh on Twitter.
Health Sector Case Competition
Post By:
Katy Perkins
MBA, class of 2013
Pictured from left to right: Mike Schildkraut, Director of Strategic Marketing; Rhonda Rickey, Director of Global Alliance Management; BU MBA students Katy Perkins; Ritika Mahal; Sara Meinke; and Jin Chon, Senior Director of Global CNS and Strategic Product Planning
As a team, we were very excited to represent BU at the BAHM Case Competition! We had a great experience, resulting in third place.
BAHM is the Business School Alliance for Health Management. There are ten participating schools:
· Arizona State University W.P. Carey School of Business
· Boston University School of Management
· Duke University Fuqua School of Business
· Harvard Business School
· Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management
· University of California – Berkeley
· University of Colorado – Denver
· University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business
· Vanderbilt University Owen School of Business
This was the second year the ten schools came together for a case competition. This year Duke’s Fuqua School of Business was the hosting school.
The corporate sponsor for the case was Takeda Pharmaceuticals, and the topic was Alzheimer’s disease and brain health. We were given ten days to design a launch strategy for a novel biomarker assay for the risk assessment of Alzheimer’s disease, paired with a preventative drug therapy, which is about to enter Phase III trials. We spent considerable time assessing the strategic and competitive landscape, pricing issues, current patient and disease management, reimbursement and the role of insurance organizations, and put together all our recommendations on how to successfully deliver this risk assessment and drug therapy to market. Our strategy involved building physician relationships, particularly with primary care physicians and neurologists, using direct-to-consumer marketing and providing patient and caregiver education. We also did extensive analysis to forecast results of the launch.
Our team had to present late in the day, but we felt very good about it. We gave a twenty minute presentation followed by fifteen minutes of questions. The judges asked insightful questions and seemed genuinely interested in our ideas. At the awards reception, we were recognized as the third place winners. Wharton got first place and Duke got second place. We were very excited and proud to return to BU, having placed in the 2011 BAHM Case Competition. We look forward to BU doing even better next year!
Katy Perkins is a 2nd year MS-MBA studying Information Systems and Health Sector Management. She is the President of the Health Services Management Association and is interested in a career in process improvement in healthcare delivery.
A Day in the Life of a BU MBA
Post By:
Nishant Sharma
MBA, 2013
Nishant and his Integrated Project Team working on marketing their product, Mello Yello
6:25 AM – Alarm clock kicks me out of the bed and I grab my laptop. A good night sleep was a must before the long day ahead; it happens to be one of the busiest days of the first semester with interim presentations for the Integrated Project scheduled for tomorrow
6:30 AM – Log into team room booking system to grab a room. With presentation material submission due tonight there is a great rush to grab rooms with LCD projectors. Inform my team mates about the successful capture of a team room in the first email of the morning
7:00 AM – Register for my elective course for the spring semester. With more than 50 options for a single elective spot, the process to select one was hard over the past week.
7:30-8:30 AM – Work on my part of the presentation and create a script that I will practice later in the day with my team. Integrated project is the best part of first semester for me. It is an opportunity to put into practice all my learnings from the coursework. It is also tough as hundreds of hours of work have to be condensed into fifteen slides.
9:00 AM – Take the ‘T’ to school and discuss the progress of the presentation with my roommate
9:30- 10:30 AM – Meet with my team in the team room I reserved to integrate the individual sets of presentations and also make some tweaks
10:30 – 11:00 AM - Work on my individual portion of the presentation
11:30 – 12:30 PM – Catch my classmates in the graduate lounge and discuss the financial news and integrated project over the lunch
12:30 – 2:00 PM – Final lecture of the semester for Statistics. It was an awesome class and professor Shwartz was really awesome at engaging students even for what is supposed to be a theoretical class. I’ll miss all the candy experiments which we did as part of class learning. We fill out the evaluation forms for the course and the professor
2:30 – 3:30 PM – Spend some time in the graduate computer lab working on the financial part of the project and catching up on the news for the day.
4:00 – 5:00 PM – Attend Dean Freeman’s session on his vision for the school. He is a great leader and the school is destined for great growth under his inspired vision of academic and career services
5:00 -6:00 PM – Attend a case interview workshop organized by the consulting club
7:00 PM – Team gathers at the George Sherman Union (GSU) building to work further on the Integrated Project. The GSU is a great benefit of being part of a big private university…you can get out of routine locales and yet work efficiently
8:00 – 11:00 PM – Work on finalizing our presentation and practice at the Photonics building. With such a big campus, there is never a lack of good places to do academic stuff. Enjoy pizza for dinner with the team
11:30 PM – Team finalizes the presentation and completes the online submission. I head back home by hopping on the ‘T’
12:30 AM – Catch up with the news back in India and crash into the bed.
Nishant Sharma is a 1st Year MS-MBA with experience in Information Technology and developing sustainable practices. Most recently he was spotted participating in Karaoke with his cohort. Follow @tweet_nishant on Twitter
The BU Veterans Association
Post By:
Steve Khanoyan
MBA, 2013
Earlier this year, I separated from the Navy after leading two divisions during two combat deployments, intelligence operations, a Presidential protection detail, and a humanitarian mission after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. The transition back to the civilian world was abrupt and hasn’t always been easy. I was lucky to discover that I had other combat veterans in the School of Management community and at the beginning of the year, we decided that BU was missing an organization to unite veterans across the university.
The BU Veterans Association was formed by four of us (I am currently the Vice President) with the goal of speaking up for veterans’ issues on campus, providing mentorship for new students who may just be coming back from a deployment, creating a unique alumni network, and just get together for a drink from time to time.
We were surprised how much support we received from BU including the Dean of Students, Provost, and individual schools on campus. Though the four of us that now serve as the club’s executive board are all MBA students, the organization is open to all veterans at BU and we’re proud to have over 80 members in just a few months.
As we continue to grow, we’re planning on hosting some great events during the upcoming months - including a benefit for a local veterans’ shelter. Our organization is working with the University registrar to be in touch with incoming veterans to the University so that no veteran is ever alone at BU. As a founding member, I am proud to know that in 2013, this veterans’ organization will be my lasting legacy at BU.
Steve Khanoyan is a 1st year MS-MBA who most recently served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy. Steve also earned his undergraduate degree from BU in 2007. Following graduation, he hopes to work in operations for a major airline.