Yale SOM Visit

So I just got home from my visit up at the Yale School of Management. All in all it was a success.  I got my first taste of the day in the life of an MBA student.  Ok here goes the recap...

I was at Penn Station by 6:30 and got on the train at 7.  At this point I had no idea what to expect.  I started thinking to myself... “Is this school going to be a fit?”  “How many other people will be in the group?” etc etc blah blah... ok fell asleep on train... 1.5 hours later I was in New Haven.

It was my first time being in New Haven.  I had driven by it before but never stopped in it.  Maybe going to McDonald’s or something but whatever.  So my first impression was “wow this is an old town!”  You really get a sense of it being a New England town, just from looking at the buildings.  They’re all brick and not very high... remember I’m used to NYC.  It was quaint, not much hustle and bustle but then again it’s Presidents Day.

So I go outside the train station and have a cigarette of course.  Yes yes I know disgusting habit that I’m going to quit after the GMATs!  ;-)  I get in a cab and tell him 55 Hillhouse Ave, which is the Yale SOM visitors center/admissions building.  Ok so I’m used to being in cabs, but this cab was expensive and I don’t think the Visitors center could have been more than 2 miles away from the train station.  The cab started at $3.25 and was $0.25 per 1/9th mile!  $8.75 and $1.25 tip later I’m standing in front of the Visitors center.  I go take a couple of pictures of some signs and have another cigarette just because I knew I wouldn’t be able to have one for a while! 

I was about a half hour early, so I walk in and introduce myself, get my name tag, and have a seat.  When I walked in there was another prospective student sitting there.  Turns out she was waiting to have her interview.  No wonder she looked a bit nervous.  People started trickling in and before you know it, they moved us to another room where we all sat and waited for a couple students to come in and give us an introduction.  We were all making small chat.  You know the standard “where are you from?”  “what do you do?”  “are you here for an interview and a tour or just an interview?”  I would say that about half of the people in the group of say 20, were there for an interview as well.  Another handful were applying for R3, and the rest of us were just getting an early start on visiting schools.

Now as a sidenote I will say the following for anyone going to visit schools.  Please dress appropriately.  I wore dress shoes, suit pants, a light blue button down shirt underneath a navy blue v-neck sweater.  I was dressed appropriately.  There were about 3 people in jeans and button downs or sweaters.  That wouldn’t have been weird had it just been me mixed in with them, but we were mixed in with people dressed in suits going in for their interviews.  So I would have felt inadequate had I been them.  

Since this was Yale... i would say 90% of people visiting wore blue!  Coincidence?  I think not!  

After a couple minutes, our student guides came in and explained to us the new (circa 2006) Yale SOM Integrated Curriculum.  This was definitely a high-point of the day for me, because honestly... I could not truly decipher the diagram on the website.  Can you?  http://mba.yale.edu/MBA/curriculum/pdf/diagram.pdf Didn’t think so. 

Well the student guides broke this down for us and it totally makes sense and energized me.  Instead of having multiple classes within each siloed discipline like Finance, Accounting, Marketing, etc.... you learn things from different perspectives such as... from the Customer perspective, Investor perspective, Competitor perspective, Employee, and so on and so forth.  You do get to learn the basics of Economics and Accounting and such in the beginning of your first year, but the Perspectives are the main ways of learning.  I really like this innovative way of learning.  It puts you in the position of each component to force you to look at things from a different angle, as you progress through the curriculum!  Very nifty!

After they explained the curriculum we went to sit in on a class.  I chose to sit in on a class called Employee.  You can basically tell what it’s about... they were going over a case about Harrah’s casino and how to motivate the cage workers and managers with incentives/bonuses.  It was obviously based on the case that they had read the day before.  The professor and class was very interactive.  No one was fighting for speaking time...it didn’t seem like anyone was worried about a Cold Call.  All answers were very genuine.  It turns out that tomorrow the protagonist of the case will actually be speaking at Yale.  So I thought this was very neat in that you can get inside his head to see why he made the decisions that he did.

One thing that stuck out in my head was when one student was answering a 2 part question, but couldn’t really get the answer so she said “maybe one of my classmates can help me out here” and immediately a couple other hands went up to help her out.  I thought that was very cool.  Yes there were people who just couldn’t be bothered because they were clearly tired, but that’s going to be with any school.  

I can definitely picture myself sitting in this type of classroom on a daily basis.  The discussions were not in some foreign language or uncommon business vernacular.  Some students threw in some business buzz words, but that's ok!  I have a few up my sleeve too.  This just comes down to a matter of being accepted!

The classroom was situated in a semi-circle of course.  It may have been slightly tiered, but it wasn’t intimidating by any means.  Very bright too!  Lots of windows.  The professor had two pull down screens on each side of the blackboard.  The blackboard of course could slide back and forth.

After this class we went back to the Visitors center and waited for the student guides to take us on a tour of the b-school campus.  The campus isn’t big, it only consists of 3 buildings, 2 of which are connected by tunnels, but considering that the the total combined student population is < 500, 3 buildings isn’t bad.  The facades of 2 of the buildings are older, since they were old mansions, and yes the floors do creak, but the newer sections of the buildings are nice and modern.  Here is a good time to remind everyone that the school of management will be getting a new home in 2013.  It’s gorgeous, there are only pictures available online.. 

here are some pics of the proposed buildings...  this won't be completed until the year I would graduate..

So after the tour, we went to lunch... standard cafeteria here... order food... pay for food... eat food... food was good.  After we ate, we went to another class.. the set up in this room was definitely tiered.  It was smaller than the previous classroom and the professor only had 1 projection screen.  This class wasn’t case based.  It actually seemed like there was a lot of reading that had been prescribed.  The students had a 2 question quiz at the beginning of the class.  The quiz would not be hard if they did the reading.  It was just two basic questions...  no big deal.. do the reading get a good grade.

This brings me to another point... about grades...  There are no grades at Yale SOM.  I knew this, but didn’t really understand it that well. The two categories are basically Distinctions and Proficient.  It’s very hard to fail, they said that you would actually have to try very hard to fail.  Most people get proficient, but distinctions are available.  A good thing about not having grades is... well the obvious... less stress... and you can take classes that you may be interested in without worrying about failing and ruining your GPA.  Also, not having grades fosters more teamwork, because you’re not competing with people.  

After this class, we went back to the Visitors center to participate in an Admissions Q&A.  When we got to this part I thought to myself “YES... THIS IS WHERE I’LL ANSWER MY QUESTIONS.”  So here are my notes from that conversation:

• There is a real sense of community because it’s small & diverse
• Core courses have 2 Faculty in the room @ the same time
• Yale SOM doesn’t want to just be highly regarding in comparison to other b-schools.  They are working towards being the best! 
• AdCom goes through undergrad transcripts line by line looking for quant classes, not just overall GPA.
• If you’re a career switcher, explain how you became interested in your future career path in the essays.
• If you are granted an interview, the interveiwers only see your resume prior to meeting you.
• In terms of the GMAT the AdCom looks at the range of scores but they take the highest score.

Now guys remember the question I was going to ask?  What are 3 adjectives that would describe the quintessential Yale SOM student?

• GENUINE - PASSIONATE - FUN - TEAM PLAYER

So after that, it was time to take the train back.  Another $10 later and another cigarette... I’m sitting in the train station and I see someone else who was in my group waiting for her train.  So she sits next to me and we start talking about everything.  Then we see someone else that was with us, so he sits down with us and we go through the same process.  Then we see someone else who was with us... same story...  Then as I realize that my train is here, I see someone else that was with us, so after the 4 of us exchanged business cards...  I ran over to the other prospective and exchanged information with him too.  Two of the guys live in NYC about 20 blocks from me, so maybe we’ll get to meet up some time.

Now... I must add this in because this was a concern of mine.  Being a gay male I was wondering how it would feel being back on a college campus again AND being OUT this time.  Well I can say that I think that people are just too busy to care at Yale.  (NYU also, but then again that's in NYC and here it's kind of an identity thing)... but at Yale I was comfortable being myself.  Not my New York self (more on that if you ask).... I was just me... didn't get any weird looks.. people were just being people.  It was nice.. very nice...  A+ in my book!

Ok that’s it for Tonight... this was a long one!  Let me know your thoughts...