Kellogg Involvement Options

One of the reasons I chose Kellogg is because of all the amazing ways to get involved and to learn in different environments. I realize that other schools have comparable opportunities, but I'm not aware of another school that encourages and allows so much student involvement. In fact, based on what I saw at Day At Kellogg, my impression is that everything is student driven. I love this aspect of Kellogg life. In the real world, instructors and advisers can't just step in and help if something is going astray. This opens up a larger chance of failure, but it also allows for a great deal more student learning (in my opinion that is).

Here are just a few of the things that I want to do while at Kellogg.

Basketball Club
Broad Fellows Program
Business With a Heart
European Business Club
Global Initiatives in Management (GIM)Go-Konnect Networking Club
Government and Business Club
Holy Angels
Innovating Social Change Conference
Kellogg Adventures and Outdoor Service (KAOS)
Kellogg Student Association (KSA)
Kellogg Christian Fellowship
Kellogg Corps
KLiCS
Leadership through Experience and Action Program (LEAP)
Marketing Club
Merger
Neighborhood Business Initiative
Political Issues Club
Prospectus
Ski trip
Social Impact Club
Softball Club
Sports Business Club
Study abroad (hopefully at London Business School)
Texas Club

Obviously I can't take part in all of these, even most of these. Now I just have to cull the list to decide which are most important to me.

Day At Kellogg Part 2

Continued from a previous post.

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Day 3 (Saturday, February 19, 2005)

We learned the lesson from the previous morning's breakfast and skipped Saturday's breakfast session and slept late. We arrived just in time for the first session, one that was about Kellogg's Career Management Center. I honestly don't remember much about this presentation, but I seem to recall a relatively positive feeling afterward. Next up was our third and final mini-class. This class was on marketing and I learned more about marketing during that hour than I did during an entire class in college.

Next up was an alumni panel discussion. All of the presenters were impressively pedigreed and it was nice to hear from some successful graduates. For lunch, we had the choice of going to a presentation on one of Kellogg's many majors. I chose to go to a General Management presentation to learn a bit more about the major. While the lunch was definitely worthwhile, I wish that I would have had the opportunity to hear all of the lunch presentations. I feel confident in what I want to do with my life, but just the same I would like to know more about my other options.

Post lunch, Dean Jain spoke to us. I was immensely impressed. Once of my concerns going in was that Kellogg couldn't get a "big name" replacement after Dean Jacobs retired. I quickly learned that this was not the case; a big name could have been chosen, but Kellogg instead focused on the best choice. Dean Jain lives Kellogg and is a tremendous asset to the program.

The rest of the afternoon was dedicated to the outside-of-the-classroom Kellogg experience. My wife and I had the opportunity to research many of the clubs with which we could get involved. The only problem is that there are too many things to do at Kellogg and we won't be able to partake in all of them.

In the evening, we were bussed to Chicago (on school busses!) for the closing ceremonies. Normally these events bore me, but I had a great time with some great people. We got to hear from some additional alumni and got to see a slide show (!) of pictures from the previous days of DAK. After dinner we went to a Chicago bar and enjoyed our last official DAK event.

End of Day 3 grade: A

Day 4 (Sunday, February 20, 2005)

Originally we had planned to go on a housing tour, but my wife had already been on a similar tour on Friday so we ended up walking around Evanston. The town is wonderful. We both fell in love.

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Final thoughts: Day At Kellogg exceeded our expectations. Both of us had a good time, both of us were impressed, and both of us felt at home. I sent in my deposit as soon as we got back to Houston.

DAK Photo #4

Same Lake Michigan, same beach, different day (DAK Day 4).

DAK Photo #3

Lake Michigan and the beach on our second day in Chicago (DAK Day 2).

DAK Photo #2

This is a photo of the front of the Jacobs Center.

DAK Photo #1

This is the atrium of the Jacobs Center during TG on Friday. It is a mix of current students, potential students, and both of the aforementioned parties' significant others.

Day At Kellogg

Introduction

I drank the cool aid. I joined the cult. (Brit-Chick is dead on in her post about cult comments, by the way.) The long weekend in Evanston - even with the bad weather - convinced me that Kellogg is the place for me. More importantly, it convinced my wife that Kellogg is the place for her, too.

Periodically I give a grade to Kellogg. This simply represents my feeling in terms of how comfortable I was with the school.

My pre-DAK grade of Kellogg: B (I liked it, but I wasn't 100% sold.)

Day 1 (Thursday, February 17, 2005)

We left Houston on Thursday night and arrived in Chicago around two hours later than scheduled. The announced reason was that the Windy City was a bit too breezy so we weren't able to take off from Houston at our regularly scheduled time. We made it to our hotel in just enough time to grab a bite from Subway and to make it to the only scheduled event of the evening: a welcome dessert. Our first impression was actually a very negative one. We walked in, hung up our coats, and no one greeted us. In fact, the first person to come up to us was an employee of the apartment building where the reception was being held. Ultimately, we met a number of people - current and potential students and their significant others - but we still left with a less than positive impression of Kellogg. Because of this feeling and since each of us was already tired we skipped the post-event bar visit and we went to bed.

End of Day 1 grade: D

Day 2 (Friday, February 18, 2005)

The previous night left each of us with an indelible impression of dread. We were not looking forward to the day's events. However, we were quickly surprised. We arrived at the Jacobs Center (Kellogg's primary building for 2-year MBA students) and were quickly greeted by a first-year student we had met the previous night. He pointed us to the continental breakfast and helped us register. Soon after this we had the pleasure of meeting Brit-Chick in person.

The day continued on a positive note with the opening ceremony and a team building event. Immediately after the opening, my wife went off with the other Joint Ventures (i.e. significant others) for their own DAK program. (In retrospect, I would have liked to have seen the team building event cut and more time given to the presentations on the different majors.) During lunch, we had the option of going to two presentations from a number of different academic areas. I chose to attend discussions on non-profit management and marketing. While both sessions were informative, neither professor blew my socks off. We then rendezvoused with our Joint Ventures and heard a group presentation on academics and financial aid at Kellogg.
Mrs. Majalo then went back to the Joint Ventures world and we were off to sample two mini-classes.

My first class was on decision sciences (statistics) and my second class was on finance. Both professors were simply amazing. I was very impressed. This was my first clue as to how different Kellogg is when compared to my undergraduate school and to other less-stellar MBA programs. The decision sciences professor was relatively junior in the department, but he could make a living as a public speaker. Very engaging, very entertaining, and very funny. Oh and he knew his stuff, too. The finance professor was relatively high up in his department and - while he wasn't quite as much of a showman as the previous professor - was obviously very intelligent and very experienced. Not once during the 2+ hours of mini-classes did I lose interest.

Next, we met back up with our joint ventures and went to the Kellogg Friday tradition: TG. The event... make that the party... was a fun time. We got to meet and mingle with a number of first- and second-year students as well as fellow potential students. After that we got together with a pre-selected group of people (roughly 20) and went out to dinner. The food was okay, the conversation was good. We were exhausted, however, and chose to again skip going to the pub after the meal. This was despite the fact that the pub was directly across the street from our hotel. (We actually intended to go, but went to the hotel to freshen up a bit and promptly fell asleep.)

End of Day 2 grade: B+

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Too much for one post already. To be continued.

Me At Kellogg

My Final Decision

More on DAK - and my decision - later.

DAK

We are packed and ready to go to DAK. My wife and I are both working half days and our flight leaves Houston around 2:30 this afternoon. We'll get into Chicago in plenty of time (we hope) to go to a Welcome Reception later this evening. The weekend looks pretty heavily booked; we're busy from roughly 8:00 am to 10:00 or 11:00 pm Friday and Saturday. Sunday will be a bit easier since we don't have to meet until 10:00 am. The Joint Ventures group has a pretty busy schedule for my wife as well. Hopefully we'll both get a good taste of Kellogg and Evanston and we'll be ready to take that final step and declare ourselves 100% committed to Kellogg (instead of my previously stated 99%).

Decision

I'm 99% sure - and this is no surprise - that I'll go to Kellogg. I say only 99% sure because I haven't seen the campus, met that many students/admits in person, and experienced DAK. Making a decision like this without having done the above seems a bit like putting the cart before the horse, and while I have almost done that I have reserved that 1% chance that I will go somewhere else. My other two options are both waitlists, however, since mere minutes ago I asked to be moved from the London accepted list to their waitlist. This buys me some time without me having to pay their reservation fee.

Public Opinion

We went to a party last night where most everyone knew that we plan to move this summer. Not surprisingly, the sentiment as to where we should go was pretty clear: London. I have found this to be true for most people. We tell them our two options and the response is invariably: "Chicago would be nice, but you can always go there... go to London!"

I'm not including any of this as part of my decision process. A decision, I might add, that I must make this week.

Final Decision

Well, it looks like I'm essentially going to be forced to make my decision within the next week. The deadline for deciding on whether or not to go to London is next Friday (February 18). I requested an extension and was denied. I have the option to go on the waitlist for a future round, but I don't want to do that. I could also pay the required fee (well more than $1000) and then back out later, but I don't want to potentially waste that much money.

We are leaving for Chicago next Thursday for Day at Kellogg (DAK). We will have to have decided by then.

On another note, I have been browsing the London Business School admitted students forum and have noticed numerous people complaining about the financial aid process at LBS. In fact, a couple of students weren't able to get any aid last year and had to reapply this year. It hasn't exactly given me a warm and fuzzy feeling about LBS.

Finances

The whole paying for an MBA is starting to get frustrating. I can't fill out financial aid forms at Kellogg until I complete the FAFSA. I can't complete the FAFSA until we submit our 2004 taxes. We can't submit our taxes until we get all of our W2s, 1099s, etc. The breathtakingly slow rate at which the aforementioned tax statements are arriving in our mailbox is really starting to annoy me. Kellogg's advice of "Apply for Aid Early!" is all fine and good but so far not feasible.

We have started telling people that we are moving soon, too. So far we've got a super lengthy list of places to eat in Chicago... except that both of us have spent a lot of time in Chicago over the years and have hit most of the major places. We're also starting to compile a list of "wonderful little" pubs in London.

Where To Go

I was called into an impromptu meeting with my former supervisor (the same one who wrote recommendations for me) last Friday. His recommendation to me is to go to LBS.

I trust his judgment and value his opinion a great deal.

Advice for Future Applicants #2

Start Early

Perhaps an obvious statement, but very true nonetheless. I began working on the applications the very day that one became available. (If I recall correctly, this was Columbia's application, but I could be wrong.) I essentially wrote every essay from scratch, only occasionally cutting and pasting. When I did reuse material, it was never verbatim. I always customized it to the school. Needless to say, completing six applications (the five schools listed on my sidebar and Columbia) takes a lot of time. In all, I think I wrote about 30 essays. Of those essays, I felt comfortable with about 1/2 of them the first time through. The other 1/2 I ended up rewriting and - sometimes - rewriting again.

I found the amount of time it took to fill out each application to be much longer than I had anticipated. Most schools require you to write a little blurb about each job you have had, each extracurricular activity, etc. This took a lot longer than I expected.

However, neither the essays nor the applications took the longest. By far the most time consuming aspect of my applications were the recommendations. I chose my previous supervisor (I had just changed jobs and I felt he could better speak to my qualifications than could my new boss who had known me for all of a week) and my mentor to write my recommendations. I interact with both on a daily basis and I am friends with both outside of work. Additionally, both were seemingly excited to do it and agreed wholeheartedly to help out. Even so, it took them f o r e v e r to complete their recommendations. I understand their situation: five applications with five different recommendation requirements that often contained five unique essays. They completed their recommendations for my five primary schools in enough time so that I could apply in the first round for each school, but it was close for a couple of the schools.

A final reason why I feel it is best to start early is that the earlier you apply, the more time you have to plan your move. My wife and I are already feeling time crunched to get everything done in time for a summer move. I can't imagine trying to get everything done if I had been accepted in the third round. :)

Advice for Future Applicants #1

I have been meaning to post about what I learned during my application experience and this post serves as the first in that series.

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Live Your Gimmick

Whatever you do, make sure you pick one strategy, one idea, one gimmick and go with it throughout all of your applications. For example, every application that I submitted, every essay that I wrote, and every interview that I completed exuded two major things:

1) I'm a farm kid from the middle of nowhere.
2) I want to transition into the entrepreneurial non-profit sector.

Even if the essay was about my greatest accomplishment at work, I managed to bring up the previous two points. Both make my application somewhat unique in that very few farmers go back to school and get an MBA and that most people who have my professional credentials choose to remain in the private sector. Everyone who applies to the top business schools has wonderful leadership skills, a high GMAT score, and plenty of extracurricular activities upon which to build their case. I'm not saying that you should ignore your 800 score on the GMAT or the fact that you volunteer for your church every weekend - in fact I encourage you to embrace these facts - but remember that a small percentage of people every year score an 800 on the GMAT and that a lot of people volunteer at their church. You have to make your application stand out with a gimmick: something that makes the admissions department at the schools to which you applied remember who you are. I'm fairly confident that I was seen primarily as "that farm kid from Kansas" and secondarily as "the guy who wants to start charities."

This helps out in a couple of ways.

First of all, it builds consistency between your applications. If you are applying to more than just one or two schools, you run the risk of blurring the information between the applications unless you present the same exact information each school (which I did). Rather than mold my application to meet what I thought each school wanted, I focused on my strengths and on what I want to do. Not only did this help codify what I really wanted in my own mind, but it made it easier to complete all of my applications. I was never able to cut and paste an entire essay from one application to another, but I was able to recycle ideas.

Second, it makes you stand out. As I already mentioned above, all of the top applicants have very similar characteristics. To rise above the others, you have to focus on whatever aspect(s) make you different. Mine were my agricultural background and my desire to work in non-profit.

Something with which I initially struggled was the idea that I wasn't competing against any given school's preset criteria. I wasn't and neither is anyone else. You are competing against all of the other applicants and you must make yourself unique.

Edit: Added an emphasis in a couple of areas.

Tuition Reimbursement

I spoke with the head of our training and development department about potentially being sponsored by my company while getting my MBA. The response was interesting, but it didn't surprise me. (As a side note, the individual I just mentioned happens to be a product of the Stanford Graduate School of Business.)

1) We do value MBAs... we just don't encourage employees to go back to school to get them.

2) If the company did decide to sponsor someone, it would be for a part-time program only (at night, weekends, every other Friday, etc).

3) Because the employee gets more benefit out of an MBA than does the company, if an individual does go back to business school full-time, the cost of the program is entirely the responsibility of the employee.

4) Employees are encouraged to get an executive MBA only. Employees are not encouraged to get an MBA unless they are age 35 or older.

I still have another avenue to investigate, but I don't think I'll be getting any support from here.