OwenBloggers: Sharran Srivatsaa

Think, Write, Blink, Bite

So what kind of writing projects should you expect at Owen? Why are writing projects even important? Isn't the idea of business school to learn how to crunch numbers, use buzzwords, build networks, and make awesome PowerPoint presentations? Phew, I guess.

To be able to do all of the above you need to know how to link ideas. I believe that the ability to link ideas will be your greatest takeaway from business school. One way in which many courses at Owen help you develop this ability is by asking you to write "Reflections." These are short papers (couple of paragraphs) that ask you to:

If you are considering business school, I would recommend that you start practicing Reflection writing. Just read an article in any newspaper, think about it and write a response. A good question to ask after reading the finished product is, "Did that piece of writing add value in anyway?"

And hopefully the generations of business school students that come after us will not be subjected to articles such as this one.

Oh - and since I am on a roll with the brainstorming bubbles, let me show you a brainstorming bubble that I for one of my small projects:

And if I posted any more Visio brainstorming diagrams, Sam will not talk to me anymore :-)

Technorati Tags: Owen Graduate School of Management - Owen - Vanderbilt - Vanderbilt MBA - Writing - Reflection

Batman Bruce

How do you make Statistics interesting? How do you teach Statistics to a bunch of MBA students especially if you are going to cover an full textbook in seven weeks? Batman Bruce Cooil does it pretty darn well.

Now you have to understand this - Batman is brilliant. Sometimes I think he thinks that we are as smart as him, umm... no. So this is what Batman does - he extracts all the juice from the Statistics textbook (why didn't we just use the textbook that he wrote?) adds a bunch of things that we need to know to it... and gives it to us in the form of rockin' lecture notes.

I can picture my Stats binder filled with his precious lecture notes sitting on my "work" desk - next to the Art of War and Siddhartha.

 

Batman does tend to be a little liberal when to comes to interpreting the homoscedasticity of regression models.

Technorati Tags: Owen Graduate School of Management - Vanderbilt - Vanderbilt MBA - Statistics - Cooil

Finding Care Bear

One of the reasons why I love Owen is because it is small... and because of the small class sizes, the professors get to know the students very well. We call most of our professors by their first names, and they call us by ours. They know our backgrounds and how/when we can contribute to the class discussion (yeah, kinda hard when there are 200 people in the class and the professor has no idea what you did in your previous life)

B-School is a place where a lot of people "find" themselves, and sometimes the coursework helps you learn things about yourself that you never knew! I think Tim really helped Adam during the Reflected Best Self exercise

 

 

I'll bring you some string cheese Adam, you da man! :)

Technorati Tags: Owen Graduate School of Management - Vanderbilt University - Vanderbilt - Vanderbilt MBA - MBA - Vogus

Readings? Movie? Hmm...

While I was an undergraduate, one of my favorite professors used to play the Simpson's for us. It was awesome! Today I watched Apollo 13 for our Leading Teams and Organizations class and it was a welcome break from reading articles or chapters in books. I must admit, I actually took the movie seriously - I read the broad discussion questions beforehand, skimmed through some readings on leadership and teamwork and only then watched the movie.

Now a fair question would be, "Dude, why the heck would you do something like that?"

There is a reason (or at least we MBA students feel like we can come up with a reasonable reason for anything!) for all the prep work that I did, and that is because of our LTO Professor. Tim has us writing "Reflection Papers" based on every reading or prep assignment so that we can actually think about the material before coming to class. I requested Tim to rip-apart my reflections and give me feedback on how to develop my argument, clarify my thinking, and become a more persuasive writer. And if he is going to do take time out of his day to do that for me (yes, he does - he gives me amazing feedback on my reflection statements) the least I can do is prepare something that is worth his time. Thanks Tim!

Favorite movie quote: "We've never lost an American in space, we're sure as hell not gonna lose one on my watch! Failure is not an option" Ed Harris as Director of Flight Operations, Gene Kranz.

Admissions Tip #1: You better have a story

Will an awesome GMAT score and 5 years of work experience at a Fortune 500 help you get into Owen, maybe... but you NEED to be able to answer three big questions:

1. Why do you want an MBA
2. Why do you want a Vanderbilt MBA
3. And why now?

There are people with phenomenal backgrounds at Owen, here is mini-list from my 1am consciousness:

• Ms. Ecuador
• WNBA player
• Popular Music Industry Blogger
• Master Brewer
• CEO & CTOs of companies
• Software Engineer turned Tennis Professional
• Two Students from Suriname!
• Ben Affleck's Stunt Double

You have your fair share of I-Bankers, Consultants, Real Estate Developers, Engineers, Economists, Musicians, Medical Doctors, PhDs, HR Professionals, Lawyers, Teachers, Marketing Executives... you get the picture.

My point: You better have a story!

No cheating: Owen students at work

Where there is an opportunity to cheat, students will probably cheat... or at least try to cheat. And if someone told me that it was over 50% of graduate students cheat in some way, I would ask them to share what they were smoking with me.

I just read an article which claimed that MBA students are the biggest cheats! I find this hard to believe... but the survey claims to have surveyed 623 students in 32 graduate business programs in the US and Canada. This is one of those cases where I want to see the data... I want to see the numbers, the schools, the demographic of students that were targeted for the survey, and the very reason for even doing this survey.

Things are a little different here at Owen, everything and I mean everything is bound to an honor code. Everything from homework and tests to paying for food in the Owen cafe. There is some discussion about the honor code every single day of the week. Every professor takes the Honor Code extremely seriously... and there have been instances where students have been penalized for the violation of the honor code. Imagine a notation on your academic transcript which says "Management 351: Managerial Economics - Fail  (Honor Code Violation)" - yes, that stays on your record for life. Try explaining that to a potential employer.

Does the Honor Code kinda-hurt students as well? kinda-absolutely. For example, I could go to see a TA for help with Economics and the TA is bound by some form of the honor code and might not be able to help me get further in my understanding of the material *without giving away the answer*. This is not the TA's fault and neither is it the Honor Code's... but is there any other way to do it? The TA's do a good job of trying to explain the concepts - but at that time walking you through the concept is giving you the answer... what do you do? If the TAs just dished out the answers... many students would just line up at the 11th hour to get all the answers to the homework questions. That's not fair either.

Business schools talk about the degree of collaboration among students - but how far does this degree of collaboration go? If I don't understand how to do a regression analysis even after my study group has tried to explain it to me, can I just copy the homework answer from my study group? Or how is this degree of collaboration perceived across different cultures? This is very challenging!

I do know one thing - gray areas don't help on such matters. For one of my classes, I have to sign every single hardcopy deliverable to attest it as my original work. I like the Owen Honor Code because its clean (or as clean as can be) - everyone knows the difference between right and wrong... and if they still make the shady choice, well... that's not fair and its bad karma.

Too tired to work, too guilty too rest

That summarizes exactly how I feel right now. And if anyone told you that the hardest part about business school was getting in, tell them to take a hike. There are no easy projects or assignments, unless you already have a PhD in Stats or Accounting before you start... you are going to struggle. The struggle is no reflection on your intelligence, the sheer volume of assignments is the kicker. But I must admit...if you don't need to sleep, eat, commute, exercise, unwind, or talk to anyone to maintain your sanity - you might do alright for a few weeks. And after that, you will be treading water, just like all of us. As Economists say, in the long-run even a monopoly's profits are driven to zero!

Oh, don't worry if you are a procrastinator - you can only procrastinate if you have time to put something off.

Too tired to work, too guilty to rest... and its only 3pm on a Wednesday.

Paul Rusesabagina to speak at Vanderbilt

I had a Netflix subscription for a while, and during that time I got to watch a whole lot of movies. The movie that biggest impact on me was Hotel Rwanda, which is the true story of a hotel manager (Paul Rusesabagina) who saved 1,200 people during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. I would highly recommend this movie. You can view the trailer here.

Paul Rusesabagina is going to speak at Vanderbilt next week! Mondays are generally my longest days as my first class is at 8am and the last class finishes at 7pm. Rusesabagina's talk is at 7pm, which means I need to have all my work for Tuesday and Wednesday done over the weekend... should be a blast!

Update: Just got an update from the Vanderbilt Speakers Committee - you can see the film Hotel Rwanda for free if are in the Vanderbilt area... you gotta love this place!

There will also be showings of the film Hotel Rwanda on Sunday, September 24, 2006, at 5 and a 7:30pm in the Sarratt Cinema. Tickets to the film are free.

Great news for Entrepreneurs & Small Businesses: Landline in your pocket

I have not had a landline for years and if I chose to get one, I would go with one of the VoIP services like Vonage. But the VoIP line is still a box... a box that I don't want to carry. Well, now I can take my landline with me.

This is absolutely great! You can plug this little USB stick into your Internet enabled computer (laptop, whatever) anywhere in the world, and the Vonage software makes your computer your landline! I am envisioning this service for international business travelers who can get their landline calls sitting at a satellite office in Bangalore! If you have family outside the US - all you have to do is subscribe to the Vonage service in the US and just mail the USB stick to your family abroad... and you can talk to them for the price of a domestic call!

VoIP did wonders for the big companies and helped them take support etc. to remote locations. I think products like Vonage V-Phone (USB stick) will do wonders for entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Here is the CNN-Money article that talks about it

Hawaii B-School gets donation and new name

Of all the places that I have had the chance to live in, Hawaii felt the most like home. The University of Hawaii campus is gorgeous - and their new tennis facility is absolutely awesome. I was very excited to see that they received a $25M donation from an alum towards their business school - the largest gift they have ever received.

Here is the BusinessWeek Online article that talks about the donation. Go Rainbows, oops... they are the Warriors now!

Feedback on Feedback

When someone asks you how they can make something better, and you tell them, and they actually do it - how does that make you feel?

Awesome. Yes, Awesome.

Students generally don't argue the value of courses such as Statistics, Accounting, Economics, and Finance. Everyone understands how important it is to learn about the forces of the market or regression analysis, but it is easier to question the value of the "soft" courses, especially when it does not have a "structure" similar to the quantitative courses.

Well, the students have spoken. Tim showed the class everyone's comments based on the mid-point evaluation of our Leading Teams & Organizations course. And put a plan in place to address all the issues... and started with it right away. He tweaked the slides, pushed the discussions further, revised the readings, (and my personal favorite) threw out a book that we all disliked... He took the course to a new level overnight. Read Isaac's post - he feels the same way!

This is what makes Owen special... the people care.

All the... small things

We have a nice library at Owen (ranked as the #1 B-School Library by Princeton Review) and although it feels like you have just been hit by Mortal Kombat Character Sub-Zero's ice-freeze-blast, (yes it gets a little chilly in there at times) it is still everyone's favorite place to study.

The center of each study table has a mini-podium like structure which has outlets for our laptops. And today when I walked in I saw a box of Kleenex on each of the mini-podiums. Now this might not sound special to you - but this is such a great idea especially since its getting a little cooler these days, and there are a lot more sniffles going around. This is the kind of thoughtful "above and beyond" that you get at Owen.

Pre-MBA Accounting Resource

I just read my fellow Owen Blogger Isaac's post with a good tip for students who are going to enroll in an MBA program: do a quick accounting prep/refresher! Although I placed out of the core Accounting course, I walked through the Accounting Interactive of the MBA Survival Kit. The interactive CD-ROM only took a few hours and did a good job of covering the basics. I would highly recommend all the 4 CD's of the MBA Survival Kit.

But I definitely give Isaac credit for the tip :)

Whatever, I am going dancing!

All the first-year MBA students have the big Accounting mid-term tomorrow... I am stoked that I did so much accounting in undergrad that I placed out of the core accounting course.

Its easy to get sucked into Owen - because there is always something to suck you in. If there is one word to describe my average day, it would be "nuts." And I am going nuts... but today was good because HH, JL and I went to our first Waltz and West Coast Swing dancing class on campus. The instructor was apologizing for loading us with tons of information.... I laughed! I appreciate the sentiment, but she has no idea about all the info bundles that get thrown at us everyday. But it was awesome because I actually got a chance to stroll to the other end of campus... a chance to stop and smell the roses if you will. The dancing was such a welcome break and a different sort of workout for the day... it got the hands, legs, feet and brain moving.

Back to crafting out the Owen on Leadership essay that I talked about in yesterday's post. Its coming together... the hard part is to make an impact with a story instead of it reading like a biography. That is probably the take-away (b-school buzzword) for the last couple of weeks - build a story into anything and everything to make a lasting impact.

Tags: vanderbilt, owen graduate school of management, owen, mba

Owen cracks the MBA mold

We are all about doing great things here at Owen - everyone is constantly thinking about what will make our students more prepared for the big-bad-world.

Recently, BusinessWeek Online did an interesting article on schools which have offbeat courses in their MBA curriculum. The schools featured in the article were Columbia Business School, INSEAD, Vanderbilt-Owen and NYU-Stern.

Nashville has become the healthcare capital of the US - and Owen is really doing wonders with its Healthcare (focus) MBA. My friends in the program are doing a healthcare immersion course where they spend time on the hospital floor to really learn how everything works. Here is an excerpt from the BW article:

Transplant Administration Business students who want to enter the health-care sector after graduating don't need to be medical doctors. But they do have to understand how hospitals work and what medical professionals need to keep people alive. That is especially true for business students who want to join the growing ranks of transplant administrators, a job role that came into existence in the early 1990s after a national system for distributing organs for transplants was created. This fall, for the first time, three out of 40 health-care MBA students at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University will be learning the ins and outs of the transplant business.

Click here for the full article

myOwen on Leadership

All the first-year students are writing a one-page essay for a class publication called "Owen on Leadership." We are writing about a "personal" leader - someone who we think has consistently, or perhaps in one moment, demonstrated exemplary leadership. 

I am enrolled in a seminar this module called, "The Bottom of the Pyramid," based on a book by Dr. CK Prahalad titled, "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid." It talks about the potential eradication (theoretically at least) of poverty through business. I am thinking of writing my leadership piece on Dr. Mohammed Yunus, Economics PhD from Vanderbilt and founder of the Grameen Bank.

While I was doing some online research I came across this piece which refers to all this as "the mirage at the bottom of the pyramid:"

Poor people – at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) – represent a very attractive market opportunity. The ‘BOP proposition’ argues that selling to the poor can simultaneously be profitable and help eradicate poverty. This is at best a harmless illusion and potentially a dangerous delusion.

What do you think?

Vanderbilt University Video

                 

Everybody likes videos! Here is a quick clip of Vanderbilt University. I remember during the b-school search I would scour every website for video clips - just to get a better feel for what it is like. This would be especially helpful for international students who might not get a chance to visit campus.

Owen welcomes new (superstar) students!

Owen School sees greater selectivity, record increase in GMAT and second straight year of increased applications

NASHVILLE, September 1, 2006 – With classes underway for the newest crop of students at the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management, this year’s incoming group of MBAs represents the biggest jump in average GMAT score in the school’s 37-year history and a second straight year of increased applications.  Total applications to Owen’s full-time MBA program jumped by more than seven percent, reflecting continued growth of and interest in the Vanderbilt brand of management education and resulting in a significant rise in selectivity.

Click here for the full article

Are your ready for Vanderbilt?

One of the major reasons why I chose to come to Owen was because of Vanderbilt University. As a student at the business school, you could spend all your time in and around Owen if you wanted to... but there are always so many exciting things going on in the Vanderbilt community.

Yesterday I went to a lecture by Professor Joe Hamilton on "the role of science and rationality in the universe and what that says about a living, personal God." I went because I have always wanted to hear a physicist speak about spirituality. I learned that Professor Hamilton was given the highest honor by the government of China, and that he has over 900 publications till date! 900!?!? That averages to about 30 publications a year over the last 30 years... and if you know anything about research and publications, getting even a few publications a year is an achievement!

The talk was in a warm setting - the organizing team brought home cooked dinner for the attendees and I got to sit beside another brilliant individual at dinner - Dr. Dick Speece, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Engineering. We talked about everything from how I am doggie-paddling to stay afloat here at Owen to his research interests and a book that he is working on!

The reason that I am writing about this is for people to know that there is more to business school than business school, especially here at Vanderbilt. There are opportunities to expand your horizons everyday, the question is - are you ready for them?

Shape your world?

The tagline for the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management is "Discover this place. Shape your world." To people who are not here at Owen that might just be a tagline - but for us it is a way of life.

On the last day or Orientation, Dean Jon Lehman told our class two things:
1. Anyone could challenge him to anything, and if they beat him - he would immortalize them on a "roll of honor" in his office
2. Lets get coffee - He said that he would go to coffee with us anytime. (yes, Starbucks is right across the street - so close that we can catch the WiFi signal there)

Well, I wrote Dean Lehman an email and asked to take him up on #2 - to go to coffee and discuss an idea that I had. How many of us can say that we went to coffee with the Dean on the first day of classes? I can.

I pitched my idea to have a group of official bloggers for the business school - to share our experience with the world, specifically to have an unedited voice. After listening to me for 30 seconds, he said, "Done! I think thats a great idea and I will support that. What else do you have for me?"

This idea was built and approved on a Grande White Chocolate Mocha, and now we have a team of ten bloggers who will share their business school experience from different perspectives.

Thank you Dean Lehman for letting me "Shape my world!"