I received an email this morning from a young lady who is a Stanford GSB Round 1 admit and I thought some of the readers here might benefit from my response:
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Maureen wrote:
“Hello Marquis,
I am a Round 1 admit at the Stanford GSB and I have been following your blog for sometime now. I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about the Class Immersion Experience during Admit Weekend and your experiences at Stanford:
1) How is the Class Immersion Experience like? What can I expect during this activity?
2) My background is in Mechanical Engineering and have never really taken any significant business classes before. I have read the case study assigned to me, took notes on it, and tried to answer the discussion questions the best that I can. What other “things” should I be looking for? Can you give me some guidance on how to go about “studying” these cases?
3) I am assuming that you have no business experience prior to Stanford. Coming from an engineering background, did you think you were at a “disadvantage” because of limited exposure to finance and accounting? How can I better prepare for B-school? What can I do to make the most out of Stanford GSB?
Thank you very much. I look forward to reading more of your blog entries
Best Regards,
Maureen”
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My response:
Maureen,
Congratulations on getting admitted to the GSB…it’s a great place and i think you’re going to really enjoy yourself at Admit Weekend. To make sure I answer everything, I’ll respond to each of your questions, separately:
1. The Class Immersion Experience is pretty much what it sounds like…it’s a session that should run for about an hour and a half and simulate a real case discussion of the kind that you’ll see in class at the GSB. Each admitted student gets put into a study group and the group meets for about an hour before the session to discuss the case and associated questions. This is the time where you’d put any ideas that you’ve got out on the table to get other people’s feedback on it. Then, when you get into the Class Immersion Experience session, a group of about 50-60 students will be set up with a GSB professor who will run it just like a real class session. Most of the professors will even throw in cold calls every now and then to give you the “real deal” feeling of what it’s like in the classroom. The activity is meant to be low pressure, but, when you’re in the middle of it, one can often feel pressure to say the right thing because no one wants to risk embarrassing themselves in front of a bunch of their future classmates.
2. It’s difficult to say what “other things” you should be looking for without knowing what case you’re doing and what the questions are, so I’ll just try to “best guess” it for you. Thinking back to my own experience during that session, I would recommend that you try to go below the surface and try to get at the story behind the story. OK, that might seem a little crytic, so here’s what I mean…as you’ve seen from that case you’ve reviewed, cases are written like story with some unknown or indefinite conclusion that leave the reader hanging. The questions that go along with the case are meant to help the reader (and the class section) to dig at what’s really going on in the story and pull learnings from it. One mistake that many people (myself included) make when they first start doing cases is that they simply answer the questions and don’t pull out any of the deeper insights. These insights would be the “so what?” that you might hear McKinsey people talk about when they’re coaching people on how to do cases. This is probably best illustrated with an example. Let’s think about the NFL’s launch of the NFL Network a few years ago. The case would probably tell the story and the questions would ask you a bunch of things, likely including “Why did the NFL choose to launch its own televison network”. The surface-level answer would be “to give its fans a chance to get a network that would offer all NFL games and content at all times”. The “so what?” answer would be “to take advantage of the revenue potential in the highly-growing premium cable sports network market. The NFL realized that players like ESPN and FOX were making millions off of its brand and decided to become a part of that action too”. I wasn’t able to dig into these deeper insights when preparing cases for class until my second year of Bschool, so I wouldn’t think that the professors would expect you to be able to do so during Admit Weekend. For a few tips on how to think through some of these “so what?” insights, check out my case interview prep guide and look at the slides for “Learning to Think Business”.
3. You are correct in your assumption that I had no business experience prior to the GSB and that had me terrified going into the first year of school. I didn’t just think I’d be at a disadvantage…I KNEW that I’d be at a disadvantage because I’d never taken most of the core classes before. Unfortunately, I let those worries keep me studying constantly during first year and i missed out on a lot of the social experiences that make up a huge part of why people go to business school. In hindsight, I would have thought about getting prepared for these core classes MUCH earlier than two weeks before starting pre-term. I would have tried to sign up for a couple of classes at local community colleges or universities just so I wouldn’t be seeing the material for the first time at the GSB. Also, I would have bought a couple of review books or CD sets and gone through them from May to July of 2004 before leaving my job…I was totally disinterested in work anyway, so I should’ve made that time become useful for my long-term well-being. Most of all, I would recommend doing whatever you can to wipe any fears about being at a potential disadvantage out of your mind. I let those thoughts dog me during my first year and what I should have been thinking was that I had something to offer in my own way and been happy with that. You only get to go to business school once, so you should establish your confidence in what you bring to the table as early as possible to get the most out of it.
I hope this helps. Good luck and enjoy your last few months of work before Bschool.
-Marquis
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Maureen wrote:
“Hello Marquis,
I am a Round 1 admit at the Stanford GSB and I have been following your blog for sometime now. I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about the Class Immersion Experience during Admit Weekend and your experiences at Stanford:
1) How is the Class Immersion Experience like? What can I expect during this activity?
2) My background is in Mechanical Engineering and have never really taken any significant business classes before. I have read the case study assigned to me, took notes on it, and tried to answer the discussion questions the best that I can. What other “things” should I be looking for? Can you give me some guidance on how to go about “studying” these cases?
3) I am assuming that you have no business experience prior to Stanford. Coming from an engineering background, did you think you were at a “disadvantage” because of limited exposure to finance and accounting? How can I better prepare for B-school? What can I do to make the most out of Stanford GSB?
Thank you very much. I look forward to reading more of your blog entries
Best Regards,
Maureen”
————————
My response:
Maureen,
Congratulations on getting admitted to the GSB…it’s a great place and i think you’re going to really enjoy yourself at Admit Weekend. To make sure I answer everything, I’ll respond to each of your questions, separately:
1. The Class Immersion Experience is pretty much what it sounds like…it’s a session that should run for about an hour and a half and simulate a real case discussion of the kind that you’ll see in class at the GSB. Each admitted student gets put into a study group and the group meets for about an hour before the session to discuss the case and associated questions. This is the time where you’d put any ideas that you’ve got out on the table to get other people’s feedback on it. Then, when you get into the Class Immersion Experience session, a group of about 50-60 students will be set up with a GSB professor who will run it just like a real class session. Most of the professors will even throw in cold calls every now and then to give you the “real deal” feeling of what it’s like in the classroom. The activity is meant to be low pressure, but, when you’re in the middle of it, one can often feel pressure to say the right thing because no one wants to risk embarrassing themselves in front of a bunch of their future classmates.
2. It’s difficult to say what “other things” you should be looking for without knowing what case you’re doing and what the questions are, so I’ll just try to “best guess” it for you. Thinking back to my own experience during that session, I would recommend that you try to go below the surface and try to get at the story behind the story. OK, that might seem a little crytic, so here’s what I mean…as you’ve seen from that case you’ve reviewed, cases are written like story with some unknown or indefinite conclusion that leave the reader hanging. The questions that go along with the case are meant to help the reader (and the class section) to dig at what’s really going on in the story and pull learnings from it. One mistake that many people (myself included) make when they first start doing cases is that they simply answer the questions and don’t pull out any of the deeper insights. These insights would be the “so what?” that you might hear McKinsey people talk about when they’re coaching people on how to do cases. This is probably best illustrated with an example. Let’s think about the NFL’s launch of the NFL Network a few years ago. The case would probably tell the story and the questions would ask you a bunch of things, likely including “Why did the NFL choose to launch its own televison network”. The surface-level answer would be “to give its fans a chance to get a network that would offer all NFL games and content at all times”. The “so what?” answer would be “to take advantage of the revenue potential in the highly-growing premium cable sports network market. The NFL realized that players like ESPN and FOX were making millions off of its brand and decided to become a part of that action too”. I wasn’t able to dig into these deeper insights when preparing cases for class until my second year of Bschool, so I wouldn’t think that the professors would expect you to be able to do so during Admit Weekend. For a few tips on how to think through some of these “so what?” insights, check out my case interview prep guide and look at the slides for “Learning to Think Business”.
3. You are correct in your assumption that I had no business experience prior to the GSB and that had me terrified going into the first year of school. I didn’t just think I’d be at a disadvantage…I KNEW that I’d be at a disadvantage because I’d never taken most of the core classes before. Unfortunately, I let those worries keep me studying constantly during first year and i missed out on a lot of the social experiences that make up a huge part of why people go to business school. In hindsight, I would have thought about getting prepared for these core classes MUCH earlier than two weeks before starting pre-term. I would have tried to sign up for a couple of classes at local community colleges or universities just so I wouldn’t be seeing the material for the first time at the GSB. Also, I would have bought a couple of review books or CD sets and gone through them from May to July of 2004 before leaving my job…I was totally disinterested in work anyway, so I should’ve made that time become useful for my long-term well-being. Most of all, I would recommend doing whatever you can to wipe any fears about being at a potential disadvantage out of your mind. I let those thoughts dog me during my first year and what I should have been thinking was that I had something to offer in my own way and been happy with that. You only get to go to business school once, so you should establish your confidence in what you bring to the table as early as possible to get the most out of it.
I hope this helps. Good luck and enjoy your last few months of work before Bschool.
-Marquis
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