I talked to my bosses last week about leaving...the toughest part of the process so far. I like all the people I work with and what I do but now I feel like I am letting them down since it takes so long to learn all the stuff we need to do and its hard to replace people due to the clearance and qualifications required. Also we just have been assigned a ton of additional work and we are already stretched pretty thin so this is really going to put a lot on a few different people next year when I leave...which sucks but it is not going to stop me. I think the older guys understand but the younger ones don't get it since they are all happy there and no one else is looking to leave.
My immediate supervisor was obviously not excited to hear I will be applying to schools. I think he understands and I know I will get a solid recommendation from him. He did say he would give me an excellent one but I think his initial thought was now what am I going to do? My division head was amazingly supportive and said he wish he had gone back and gotten his when he was my age. Both his brothers have their MBAs and now run companies and are extremely successful, so he knows what it can do for someone's career. He said he would give me a great rec. and how much appreciates a lot of notice so now he can try and fill my job from within soon and then I can train my own replacement up instead of just throwing it on someone in two weeks. He was extremely excited about the whole thing and wants to get to work on the recommendations...basically that whole talk really made me feel better about leaving since my supervisor looked like I slapped him when I told him.
In other news I bought a new suit for the interviews I hope to get this fall. I still need to pick up a new pair of shoes to go with it but I have everything else set up. I have to go to the tailor to have it fitted.
In admission event news:
I attended a big info session in Boston that wasn't very helpful. There were hundreds of people and the big schools HBS, Wharton, Stanford, MIT, and Kellogg had reps that gave presentations...which provided nothing new. If I had to do it over again I would have save the gas and toll money and taken the wife out to dinner instead.
A much more helpful event was a Chicago GSB event put on by current students and recent grads. The people I talked to all seemed great and everyone loved the school, it was organized by the school but still you can sense they love it. A lot of the people were from or had gone to college in Boston so I got a lot of info on comparing the two cities. Most of the guys were married too so it was interesting to get their take on being married during grad school. Overall it was a great time and I got a lot of useful info out of that. I would love for more schools to put on events like that since you really get a sense of what the school and people are like in a setting off campus and out of the academic year.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
GMAT Complete...and applications begin
Its amazing how I went from maybe wanting a masters in engineering, to getting an MBA part-time, to any decent school in the Boston area, to my wife saying she would move anywhere so I should apply where I want. Thats where we are today, aiming for a some Top 10 MBA programs and how else to begin the long and hopefully not heartbreaking process but with the GMAT
Though my studying was far from what most people who want high scores seem to do. I went through the official guide once, did the sentence correction out of the Official Verbal guide, and that was about it . It was probably a bad idea to continue with my large remodeling job on the house at the same time as I started to study since it took a lot of my time and energy away from the GMAT process. In the end I almost reached my final goal but I am not disappointed and its not worth retaking. I ended up with a 740 and above 80% on both the quant and the verbal, which is supposed to be a big key. So with a number that puts me above the mean and median for all schools, I am now going to focus on the application process which will be the real deciding factor not another few points on a standardized test.
For anyone preparing for the GMAT I recommend http://www.gmatclub.com/ as a very valuable resource. A lot of people there have gotten amazing scores and its a very supportive community compared to some of the others related to the whole MBA process. If you spend time researching MBA programs you will surely come across the forums filled with people who will tell you that if you can't go to Harvard don't bother at all or people that tell you that you don't stand a chance of getting into Columbia since you didn't go to an Ivy League School, save a small nation from a tsunami, and only got a 730 on your GMAT. (note I am not planning on applying to either of those schools)
Though my studying was far from what most people who want high scores seem to do. I went through the official guide once, did the sentence correction out of the Official Verbal guide, and that was about it . It was probably a bad idea to continue with my large remodeling job on the house at the same time as I started to study since it took a lot of my time and energy away from the GMAT process. In the end I almost reached my final goal but I am not disappointed and its not worth retaking. I ended up with a 740 and above 80% on both the quant and the verbal, which is supposed to be a big key. So with a number that puts me above the mean and median for all schools, I am now going to focus on the application process which will be the real deciding factor not another few points on a standardized test.
For anyone preparing for the GMAT I recommend http://www.gmatclub.com/ as a very valuable resource. A lot of people there have gotten amazing scores and its a very supportive community compared to some of the others related to the whole MBA process. If you spend time researching MBA programs you will surely come across the forums filled with people who will tell you that if you can't go to Harvard don't bother at all or people that tell you that you don't stand a chance of getting into Columbia since you didn't go to an Ivy League School, save a small nation from a tsunami, and only got a 730 on your GMAT. (note I am not planning on applying to either of those schools)
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Introduction...
Hopefully I can keep this blog regularly updated. I don't know how many people will actually read it but at least in a few years it will be fun to look back at. This is my introduction on where I am in life at the moment and why I am heading the way I am...its damn long
About 8 months ago I decided I wanted a change in my professional life, having just gotten married my personal life was pretty much perfect. Work while still interesting overall wasn't providing me with a sense of fulfillment. I make a comfortable living, work with a lot of good people for the most part, and the majority of the time like what I do. Sounds perfect to a lot of people. The only problem is that its one of those jobs that I don't feel I have much impact beyond my work since its very specific and also I have hit a plateau where I probably will stay for the next decade until some people finally retire. Originally I thought about getting a masters in engineering but after talking with some people who have them, I determined it wouldn't me what I hoped for in my career and would probably hurt me financially unless my work paid for it.
The more research I did the more I tended to focus on an MBA as what would help me attain my career goal. MBAs are a path to management...i.e. the location where you make decision not where you make someone else’s decisions happen. Now the process for applying to MBA program is about to begin…and this blog will follow me on my journey to what I hope is a acceptance at a school I would love to attend and hopefully will continue on from there.
About 8 months ago I decided I wanted a change in my professional life, having just gotten married my personal life was pretty much perfect. Work while still interesting overall wasn't providing me with a sense of fulfillment. I make a comfortable living, work with a lot of good people for the most part, and the majority of the time like what I do. Sounds perfect to a lot of people. The only problem is that its one of those jobs that I don't feel I have much impact beyond my work since its very specific and also I have hit a plateau where I probably will stay for the next decade until some people finally retire. Originally I thought about getting a masters in engineering but after talking with some people who have them, I determined it wouldn't me what I hoped for in my career and would probably hurt me financially unless my work paid for it.
The more research I did the more I tended to focus on an MBA as what would help me attain my career goal. MBAs are a path to management...i.e. the location where you make decision not where you make someone else’s decisions happen. Now the process for applying to MBA program is about to begin…and this blog will follow me on my journey to what I hope is a acceptance at a school I would love to attend and hopefully will continue on from there.
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