Interview with 1st Year Student in the NYU Stern MBA Program

I am pleased to offer the following interview with a current 1st year student in NYU Stern's MBA Program.

1. Looking back on the way you prepared for the MBA, is there anything you would change? Anything you would have done more of or less of?

After spending a year at NYU Stern, I’ve realized that it’s really hard to join a new society at the beginning, that is, to take leadership as a student in a foreign country.

Communication is different from just speaking in English and there is not only a hardship in language but also differences in culture and mindset. For the first few months you will spend quite an intensive time mingling and studying. Here (in the US) students keep almost no distance with each other. From the perspective of Japanese culture (I’m from Japan) I found it a bit close and felt an adjustment was required. I have learned, both from applicants who visit our campus and my own experience, that Japanese applicants focus their research more on the classes and less on the environment. That could be a big deal. You should know what’s really going on during your MBA to be assured you can feel fit with your school. It is possible that you are not outgoing enough, and so you may be confused when it comes to your school life. In order to avoid that, you should know what opportunities are being set up for you. The Japan Trek (sometimes called the Japan Trip) is a good example. You have absolute advantage in everything and there are lots of potential friends who are interested in your home country. You will be exposed to a lot of students and they will know who you are. They will realize you are polite/kind/sincere etc. and you will be able to get a strong bond with them, as you contribute to the student body in your school. This is the first step for you to make a difference in your life as a student. Thus, you should imagine such specific steps beforehand and leverage fully the opportunities you can encounter.

In addition, if I were an MBA applicant this year, I would spend more time choosing schools, specifically getting to know the environment around each one.

You will spend a lot of time outside the school, so it’s important to know the environment. Many Japanese applicants tend to focus only on school programs when they investigate business schools. This is important, but seeing other opportunities is of great importance as well. Fortunately, I live in the center of NYC, which means it enables me to network with various smart people from Japan as well as other countries. That’s one of the New York advantages. Also, the great access to other cities and countries helps me get involved in events/opportunities I cannot enjoy/experience in Japan and that makes a difference.

I know that whatever your target score is, it is hard to beat the GMAT and TOEFL. But you are not going to do them again once you enroll in your dream school, so I recommend you think of your school choice over and over while you are an applicant.

2. Can you write a bit about a course that you have really enjoyed or benefitted from?

NYU Stern is known for Finance but I think it is also good in Data Science. Since I majored in statistics and math, it allows me to know how my academic knowledge applies to real business problems/situations. Lectures here use a hands-on style and professors let us form a study group so I can learn concreted knowledge and experiences from not only the professors but my group members.

3. Have you had the time to get involved in any extra-curricular activities? If so, what ones and what are you doing in them?

I was a Japan Trek leader. There were over 170 applications to join the trip and 100 MBA students went to Japan with only three Japanese students. Half the participants wanted to go sightseeing in the daytime while others wanted to go to nightclubs every night. To satisfy both, trek leaders got up at 7am and went to bed at 5am every day. We were really exhausted but really got to know each other well. And the remarkable point is that the participants gave us a big gift as a token of their gratitude. Currently we feel much closer with each other and it motivates us to contribute to the school even more.

4. What have your experiences been like in learning/project teams? 

NYU Stern has various dual degree courses. One memorable experience was when I worked with dual degree students from the film school. It was for a data mining class and we had to create a data-mining project and complete it by ourselves. We did a project of projecting box office sales for movies. Film school students are professional in qualitative analysis of what will affect the sales of movies and I’m good at math and programming. We could realize synergies with each other. Also, if I work in Japan I wouldn’t normally have a chance to work with people from the film industry.

5. Can you share your plans for the summer?

Since I’m a company sponsored student I can’t do a summer internship. Instead, I will study Spanish and Chinese. Also, I will study programming.

6. Can you offer any words of advice for those applying to the MBA program you are enrolled in?

NYU Stern is at the center of the world and offers you a lot of opportunities that can make your life better. Please feel free to contact us from our website. Hope to see you soon. Good luck!

Thank you for your time!

John Couke

john.couke@gmail.com

Interview with Naoki Kamimaeda, current student in the Cambridge Judge MBA program

Naoki Kamimaeda is a current student at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge, and was gracious enough to spend some of his busy time answering my questions below.  Read his own blog here (in Japanese only).

Your Life at Cambridge

1. What's a typical day in the life of an MBA student at Cambridge?

The Cambridge MBA has four terms during the academic year: Michaelmas, Lent, Easter and Summer Activity. In the first two terms (Michaelmas and Lent) students mainly take core MBA courses such as Corporate Finance, Strategy and Marketing. A typical day during these terms looks like this:

9:00 – 12:30                 Classes

12:30 – 14:00               Lunch, group work, projects or extracurricular activities

14:00 – 17:30               Classes

18:00 – 19:30               Career Sessions or some talks from guest speakers

19:30 – 22:30               Social activities like formal dinners or dinners and drinks with friends

22:30 – 2:00 (or 3:00)    Preparation for the next day’s classes

In the Easter and Summer Activity terms, students mainly take electives or complete a self-project. So, students can have more free time than the two terms above.

2. Where are you living now?

I am living in a college accommodation. The University of Cambridge has a unique college system.

When students get an admission from the school, students are allocated to a college. Most foreign students can have an accommodation within or near to a college, if they wish to.

The Classes and the School

3. If you could recommend just one class to prospective applicants, what would it be and why?

It would be hard to choose one class. But, if I had to, the class would be in an area such as Strategy or Marketing. These classes are core courses in other MBA programs as well. As far as my own experience at Cambridge, I found these classes were very interesting, interactive and engaging. 


One thing I want to mention about the Cambridge MBA is that it focuses more on projects than classes.
 I think this is a strength of the program. In one year, it is possible to join four projects: the Cambridge Venture Project, the Global Consulting Project, the Capstone Project and the IndividualProject. 
As far as I’m concerned these four projects are incredibly fruitful, because we can test our takeaways from classes in real world experiences immediately.

4. What kind of clubs or student activities are you involved with?

I am involved in a football club and some study groups organized by students. I am putting a lot of my time and effort into the Intrapreneurship Study Group at Cambridge. I founded this study group with some MBAs and other students at the university so we could have opportunities,to discuss how to foster an Intrapreneurship mentality within large organizations. I believe, especially for Japanese companies, this way of thinking is crucial, because still most great employees work for large organizations.

5. Have you collaborated with any students outside of the MBA program, and in the greater Cambridge community?

As I mentioned above, I am discussing Intrapreneurship issues with not only MBAs but also other students like Ph.D. students at Cambridge. 
There are so many opportunities to do something with other students outside of the MBA program, if students are willing to be proactive. Which opportunities students can get involved in is totally up to them.

Your Advice for Others

6. Do you wish you had prepared for the MBA program any more or any differently? What's your advice for someone already accepted and waiting to start their MBA?

I wish I had studied core MBA courses like Corporate Finance, Accounting, Strategy and Marketing before coming to Cambridge so that I could have had more time to be involved in extracurricular activities. In my opinion, we can learn more from extracurricular activities than classes, especially in the case of the Cambridge MBA, because there are plenty of opportunities such as creating new businesses with other students and having lectures or talks from famous people like nobel prize winners and CEOs of large companies.

Thanks very much for your time Kamimaeda-san!

John Couke

John.couke@gmail.com

The Role of Balance in Your MBA Application

Most MBA programs ask a series of essay questions that allow you chance to bring out many sides of yourself: what you do for a career, what you do outside of work, and even your academic background. But how should you approach all of the topics in your MBA application if all you do, during the week and even a lot of the weekend, is work?  There is nothing wrong with showing dedication to your organization. However, if you are ready to make a change in your life, such as applying to business school, you need to realize that the one thing about your current life that will not go with you is that job.  The skills you have gained will - and you can show the benefits of those by describing in your essays and interview how they'll help you to make specific contributions to your classmates. But to help the admissions committee of a particular school get a good sense of your potential level of involvement outside of class, it is useful to present both your work and non-work sides in your application. There are several benefits to doing so.

1) Knowing what you choose to do outside of work helps people understand you better.

In the workplace there may be restrictions on what you can and cannot do with your time, based on your job description or level of responsibility. But in your free time, you have a lot more leverage and ability to choose what you get involved in and how you spend your time.  And understanding these decisions about what you choose to do with your free time will help your application reader better understand who you are and what you value. 

Sharing personal interests helps your reader feel that they know you better as a person and makes them feel a bit closer to you. A cold and impersonal description of a mega-merger in which you had only a minor role is not nearly as effective as a story about your determination to complete a marathon - especially when the reader if deciding whether you are an interesting person worthy of attending their school.

2) Balance in your application can make the admissions officer reassured that you will be able to make the transition to their school.  

If all you have is your job - then what will be left once you stop working?  Show that you will not sink at b-school but instead you'll swim - by describing your personal interests and what you want to get involved in while at the program. A lot of MBA graduates would likely say that they benefitted greatly from the education outside the classroom - events, trips, and other such activities with their peers. In some cases these experiences are academic in nature, such as a case competition.  But in others they are more peer-bonding exercises, where you get to know your classmates (and future global network) better. Don't underestimate the importance of a soccer club or baseball team in forming bonds with your classmates during the MBA.

3) Your work accomplishments may already be covered in your reference letters.

If one (or more) of your referees is a supervisor from your job, he/she will likely use a considerable portion of his/her letter describing the contribution you have made to projects, teams, or the organization itself. This doesn't mean you should ignore discussing your work in your essays - but it does show that certain work-related accomplishments will already be covered.

For all of these reasons, it is useful to ensure that your work takes it proper position in your application as a key part of who you are, not the entire definition. Take care to separate yourself as an individual from the work that you do.  When brainstorming potential topics, note the following two things:

1) Characteristics like leadership extend beyond the job.

Some schools (Harvard in particular) look for evidence of leadership in your application.  And it is worth noting that a true leader will exhibit this characteristic across many facets of their life. Do you know anyone who is bright, successful, trustworthy, approachable, fearless and dedicated while at work, but turns into a completely different person, devoid of all of these traits, once they leave the office?  When you are struggling with how to demonstrate your leadership, don't limit yourself to only work-related stories. Instead, show that the leadership you demonstrate at work is truly useful in understanding who you are, by showing how you exhibit that leadership outside of work too.

2) Many characteristics can be demonstrated equally well through work and non-work stories.

When asked for an example of how you have demonstrated the ability to work well in a team, often either a work-related story (your contribution to a team that made a big accomplishment) or a non-work related story (your role as the starting point guard on a community basketball team that won a big match) can work equally well.  Fo this reason, when brainstorming teamwork accomplishments, don't limit yourself to just the work experiences.  Consider what you do outside of work, and how those experiences may also be relevant. 

For those that truly dedicate the vast majority of their time to their organization, there is still one last idea to consider: informal volunteer work in your company. This may or may not be effective, depending on the individual situation.  However, there are options available to you even within the context of your organization that may help you to show balance, such as:

- attendance in a cross-functional or cross-departmental task force you chose to join to accomplish something

- weekend volunteer work done through your organization

- informal and/or extra-curricular training of subordinates

- organizing or participating in company activities such as community events, family events or other such activities

So, now we can understand the value of balance in an MBA application, and at least for most, get a head start on considering what kinds of topics might be useful. By using a variety of topics that span your work, life outside of work, and academic background, you can paint a picture of yourself that is well-rounded and will show effectively your potential to contribute to an MBA program.

The purpose of this article is not to be a definitive source, but rather to start a conversation.  Comments?

John Couke

john.couke@gmail.com