My Take on the First Year of the MBA Program
Health Sector Management & International Health
MBA Council
(L-R: Juan Machado, Sergio Floris, Roman Sverdlov, Ivan Busulwa)
First Semester
Now that I’m done, I’d like to share with you my assessment of the first year of BU’s MBA program. I have come to realize that the program is as much about time management as anything else. There are lots of on-campus & off-campus activities, optional courses to take elsewhere, keynote speakers to listen to, and extracurricular events like the cohort cup to participate in. Oft-time, I wish I could be in two places at once!
Despite all the class work that will be thrown at you especially during the 1st semester, I strongly encourage you to participate in the extracurricular events, get involved with the clubs, and get to know the second year students and mentors that will be assigned to you. I found these quite helpful since they usually went out of their way to listen to students’ issues and guide 1st years on how best to navigate the hurdle that is the first semester I. My only regret is that I didn’t get involved with as many clubs as much as I’d have liked to.
And did I mention there’s a lot to see in Boston? Fellow students from the area gave me a useful list of places I should visit before I ever think about leaving the city. There’s the Quincy market, the Aquarium, Fenway Park (which you’ll get to see a part of during orientation), all the pubs along Comm. Ave, and inevitably, a Red Sox game. Being the fair weather fan that I am, I’ll probably go to one of their games before the close of the year.
Cohort B after the finals. Goodbye first year… Enter second year!
Second Semester
I felt the 2nd semester went way better than the first one, especially since I got an internship early. This allowed me to focus on lots of other things without having to worry about where I was going to be in the summer. Besides the internship, there was a lot more to be happy about. The winter blossomed into a beautiful spring and the class work got more manageable. I also felt I got to spend more time with friends and to participate in events like the cohort cup. I decided to wrap up the year with a trip to New York City. I haven’t been to many places yet but I can certainly say NYC ranks up there as one of the grandest I’ve visited (after Boston). And the best part is that it’s only a $15 bus ride away and 4 hours from school. At such prices, I’m considering making the trip down there a weekly ritual.Although I had been forewarned, only now do I notice that MBA hours move faster than the real time. I just watched the 2nd years graduate and I still can't believe I'm less than one year away from joining them.
Overall, at the expense of sounding cliché, I feel the biggest value one gets from the MBA is the ‘experience’ with other students. Just sharing classes and spending time with various people from different backgrounds and having diverse personalities & perspectives, is one of the MBA's greatest values – and it's difficult to attach a price to that. There's definitely the in-class knowledge from the professors but I don’t think that even comes close.
In fact, at the close of the semester, I felt somewhat sad since we weren’t going to be seeing much of each other during the 2nd year as we’ll no longer have the same classes in the same cohorts. Despite all the hard work though, I can confidently say that this has been one of the finest nine months I've ‘experienced’!
Some Cohort B members after the MBA talent show. Still don’t understand how we didn’t win the cup! (L-R: Kerri Carlson, Ivan Busulwa, Assad the Assassin, Siddharth Garg, Akshay Bhargava, Rachel Dacwag)
Cohort Cup Champions
Post By:
Ajay Mehta
MBA '11
It took two years to finally hoist the Cohort Cup Trophy and this year Cohort D was able to enjoy victory. As you probably know, as full time students at BU you are split into three cohorts which consist of approximately 50 students. Those 50 students become your close friends and teammates as you navigate your way as a first year MBA. Too add to the friendly competition, competitions and networking events are hosted by the Cohort Cup Committee pitting cohorts against each other in sports, trivia, and other friendly competition.
The year comes to an end with the annual talent show where you get to see entire cohorts perform dances and songs, as well as other members of your class display talent you never knew existed. The show is judged by professors picked by each cohort to add some interesting allegiances into the mix.
Last year…it was a battle to the end with Cohort C and Cohort D taking every other competition and C finally squeezing out enough points to take the lead and win the cup. Needless to say, Cohort D was slightly bitter and with motivated first and second years, D remained in the lead the much of the year. It was a competition that brought us together as classmates. It was a nice distraction and much needed break from the rigors of a full time MBA.
The end
Post by:
Juan J Estrada
International MBA 2011
The academic year flew by and it has finally come to an end. There is a confusing bitter sweet taste in completing this program. The sweetness of the victory of completing a demanding program in one year and of joining the ranks of people trained to take decisions, manage resources and make things move forward. At the same time the bitterness of moving on from a group of people you have come to appreciate and hold dearly close, an environment of learning and camaraderie and the advantage of being a student in a student in a city of students.
In this entry I will pick what made each of my three semesters in this program bitter and what made it sweet.
Summer:
Bitter: the intensity of the work in China was harsh. Classes six days a week, three to six hours a day, a parallel project running all summer long made it challenging.
Sweet: China is an amazing country, so different in terms of culture, ideology, business practices and ways of interacting- yet so similar in its hunger for growth, for the luxurious comforts and trends coming from the west- totally worth experiencing.
Fall
Bitter: Feeling lost in my job search. As an example, I attended NSHMBA, big job conference in Chicago and the first day was rough, feeling one more of the bunch of job seekers, struggling to differentiate myself and to overcome the limitations from being an international student.
Sweet: life sciences strategy and commercialization courses. It took my best courses in the program this semester. I did a real new technology commercialization feasibility assessment and also climbed the steepest part of the business learning curve both for general business.
Spring
Bitter: The academic load + the job search. The spring is stressful. Graduation is approaching and all you hope for is a job. But you still got your last six courses stinging you the whole time, dragging you away from that one objective.
Sweet: the weather gets warmer and life gets more fun. To make things even busier, it’s in the spring that your social life will be most demanding- and rewarding. You know each other already and you will want to hang out as much as possible before it ends.
Enjoy.
The Ins and Outs of the Summer Internship
Post by:
Anya Thomas
Public and Nonprofit MBA, '12
What kind of internships do BU MBAs get? Where do they work?
You could learn banking in North Carolina, or how to lead 100 people in the telecom industry in Chicago. You could develop a growth plan for high schools in New England, or work for the Mayor’s office in Boston. From Seattle to New York City, from Tanzania to Pasadena, Boston University MBAs are spending the summer honing their skills and building relationships that will help them launch the next phase of their careers.
Finding an internship can be grueling at times. A balancing act where class projects, exams, and papers often seem to outweigh the importance of an informational interview or filling out an application. Even so, students must be diligent to build their network, figure out how to make the most of their summer, and then secure the internship that will move them forward professionally. It is exciting during the Spring semester as classmates get hired. However, it can be stressful for students who are searching for internships in industries that tend to hire late. In the end, whether you get your internship in December or May, the hours devoted to searching and preparing for an internship pay off.
I started my formal internship search in January and I was thrilled to secure my internship in Ghana by mid March. This internship embodies everything I was looking for. In a nutshell I get to apply the business skills I have been learning in class in an overseas setting. I get to work with a team of other graduate students, and if we are successful we will help people get access to clean water. What could be better than that? But there are always challenges: finding housing in a foreign city, realizing that the product you are marketing may be too expensive for the target population, adjusting to a new business culture . . .. Anyway, there is no way to tell whether success or failure is ahead of me, but regardless of the results, the depth of the learning and the relationships I will build will be priceless.
You can never start too early on your internship search. If you have a few spare hours, make a list of companies and functions that you are interested in, and start doing some informational interviews. You will thank yourself later.
Graduation Brunch
Post by:
Lauren Abrahams
MS-MBA 2011
Public & Nonprofit Management
MBA Council, PNP Club, Net Impact
Last Friday was our Graduation Brunch and what might considered the kick-off to a month of festivities leading up to the big day. After organizing so many events over the past year as a member of Graduate Student Council, it was a welcome opportunity to have someone else throw the party and be in charge for a change! I don’t want to give too much away to current first-years and future students (there are a lot of fun surprises that the faculty and staff manage to keep from the students), but it was a lot of fun and a great opportunity to spend some quality time with our professors and classmates outside of classrooms and teamrooms. It was also a lot more emotional than I expected—I saw a lot of sniffing, a few tears, and TONS of running around and herding friends into one more precious photo. I’m looking forward to what seems like the hundreds more events over the next month, but I don’t know how long I’ll be able to hold it together!
I’ve also been involved lately with the 2011 MBA Class Gift. As a Cohort Captain, it’s my job to encourage my fellow cohort B-ers to participate in the gift campaign by making a pledge to support the MBA Class of 2011 Alumni Relations Initiative. Earlier in the semester, the cohort captains all sat down and brainstormed about where we thought our class gift would have the most impact. It was actually a pretty easy decision to recommend to Dean Freeman that it support something related to alumni, as that is an area that both the dean and my classmates feel strongly about. While we don’t yet know exactly how the gift will be spent (since a lot depends on how much money we raise), everyone has generally seemed enthusiastic and supportive. While we’d like to raise a good amount so that we can have a real impact, it’s really about getting everyone to participate at whatever level they feel comfortable. We are working on setting a record of 90% participation—still have a long way to go, but the momentum is picking up and hopefully we’ll make it!