To Apply Or Not To Apply

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Kurt Mitschke

By Debjani Panda, Texas MBA at Dallas/Fort Worth Class of 2014

May 16, 2012

“Texas MBA – Deadline approaching” the subject of the email flashed in my inbox. The mail reminded me – 10 more days to go before the final deadline on May 25, 2012.

I had taken the GMAT, filled in and saved my application, gotten my recommendations, and had a strong will to get my MBA degree from McCombs. I had done enough research on the courses, spoke to alumni, and attended information sessions to make sure it fit me. I hovered on the “Apply” button, but fell short just as I had over the last couple of days.

Mentally, I went through the same set of questions over and over again. They came in strongly without any coherent order.

“How will I make time for a time intensive course like this with a full time job?”

“How will my family survive with me being occupied most of the weekends (now I know it’s not just weekends) for two years?”

“How will I pay for my MBA, can I afford it?”

“I already am a manager, do I really need it?”

“Maybe I can give it another year and then go for it with a clearer mind.” Continue reading →

Career Management for Working Professionals

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Kurt Mitschke

By Curtis Hamlin, Texas MBA at Dallas/Fort Worth Class of 2014

Hi everybody, I’m happy to be writing to you all after spending nine days in Southeast Asia for the Global Trip you will be taking your second semester. It was a whirlwind journey between Singapore and Jakarta, and a great learning opportunity for everyone involved. But I digress; the topic of this blog post will be the career management services that McCombs provides to students.

The Career Management team for the Texas MBA at Dallas/Fort Worth program has one goal, and that’s to help the students. We get treated just like full time students when it comes to career management and recently a new Associate Director, Michael Parker, was hired to support the Dallas/Fort Worth program. Living in Fort Worth, Michael will be setting up office hours here and building connections with the recruiting coordinators from local firms. On top of having a dedicated career advisor here in town for our program, we get all the benefits that are available to full time students in Austin.

The services offered by the Career Management office are listed below

One-on-one advice, counseling, and planning sessions
Career assessments
Coaching on interviewing, resume writing, negotiating, and networking skills
On-campus recruiting
Online career management guide
Peer and employer mock interviews
Case competition: Annual competition that allows students to demonstrate their case interviewing skills
Employer meet and greets: Opportunity for MBAs to meet employers and get comfortable with job fairs and similar situations
Executive speaker series: Opportunity for students to learn more about specific companies and opportunities
MBA+ projects: A group of 4-6 students work on a well-defined business issue and offer solutions to a specific client
Career fairs: Two major MBA career fairs are held in Austin each year and other events are planned throughout the year
Various workshops and seminars that cover appropriate career management topics

Of all the services that Career Management offers, I would like to review two, the MBA+ projects and on campus recruiting. First, the MBA+ projects allow working professional MBA students an opportunity to work with companies in the area on short term consulting projects to solve a well defined business problem. Because we don’t have the opportunity to do summer internships like full time students, this affords us the ability to get a similar experience. Second, on campus recruiting, this is important because not all schools offer OCR for their professional MBA programs. This process allows prospective employers to come to campus and interview MBA candidates from both the professional as well as full time programs. Participating in this is particularly important if you’re looking to change careers, which is often the goal of students in the program. Part of OCR is also a series of modules leading up to OCR which review important topics such as an alumni career panel, resume writing, employee mock interviews, and overall review of post MBA career options.

I hope that this has been a good introduction into the offerings of the Career Management team. They are a dedicated team that is always supportive and responsive and part of what makes this program great. I have personally worked with them numerous times and am always amazed at how quickly they get back to me and how no question or problem is too small for them to help with. Even though he has only been working with us for just a few weeks, Michael Parker has already started making connections in the Dallas/Fort Worth market for us. So I hope when you are considering business schools that the aspect of career management is not overlooked, because it can be the difference between getting a great education and leveraging that education to land a rewarding career.

Regards,

Curtis Hamlin

Sleep Cycle

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Kurt Mitschke

By Debjani Panda, Texas MBA at Dallas/Fort Worth Class of 2014

Overheard:

“App on my iPhone tells me I am not getting even two hours of deep sleep”. – Sleeping with the iPhone under pillow, when sleeping student

“There’s a lot of travel by road and rail and I am not on the internet most of the time.” – Fulfilling obligations in India, still working on homework cases student

“My 5 year old told me – Mommy why are you nervous about your exams, all you have to do is use your brains” – Son getting better grades than Mommy student

“I really try hard not to get into an argument with my wife on way to church” – Yet another Sunday late to church student

Debjani and her two sons

When they warned me, it’s going to be tough, I need to manage expectations and have that conversation with my significant other, I didn’t realize it was going to be this hard, where hard is an understatement. We knew that managing a part time MBA from a top 20 school, with a full-time job and a family wouldn’t be easy, but nothing could have prepared me for this. And neither was I prepared for the fun and learning that comes with it. In a nutshell, this MBA redefines the way one thinks and acts – and sleeps. It changes the lens with which one views the world. And as I go along, I am certain of a widening sphere of vision. It’s like the windshield wipers working on a foggy day. And as always, the foggiest mornings give way to the sunniest days.

In the fall of 2012, back to school had a special meaning in our family. Our five year old was eager to go to “big boy’s school” and his eagerness was only surpassed by mine to go to B-school.

The Spiderman on his backpack stared at mine with the McCombs logo. His crayons and school supplies were strewn alongside my highlighters and post-its. While I was registering and getting ready he completed his forms as well. We both got first day jitters and he echoed my feelings when he said “Mommy will they be nice to me?” So while he pranced away to school, with a fluttering heart I wiped that tear and thanked my lucky stars that we were fortunate enough to pursue that wonderful thing we call education.

Since then I have come a long way. I recently completed my first term and am very proud of myself. This is the fastest I have lived and accomplished so much under such stressful conditions that my life before the MBA feels like a breeze now.

Accounting, Statistics and Leadership in the first semester gave us the foundation to tackle Corporate Finance and Marketing in our second. Other highlights of the second semester are the International Trip and the MBA+ micro consulting project. As the name suggests, MBA+ is optional, and given the rigors of the course I would have gladly kept it at bay. But I couldn’t after I saw the list of interesting projects lined up with dream companies. I have a wonderful group and bagged the M&A project with McAfee. I just got off a conference call with our coach (yes that’s another bonus, where each team is assigned a coach to guide us throughout the semester). The call was very informative and we got insights into how to discuss scope and deliverables with our client. Then we will meet our contact at MacAfee and complete the eight week project with them.

Though many of us have been managing projects and clients in our full-time careers, something tells me this will be different, not just for the fact that this is an area where we don’t have the experience, but that we will do this project with that hint of MBA in us. Watch this space for updates along the way, and lest I forget – it’s called Sleep Cycle – the app you should be “googling” for right now, if you are in or considering an MBA from McCombs.

A Transparent Reflection

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Kurt Mitschke

By Ved Ramakrishnan, Texas MBA at Dallas/Fort Worth Class of 2014

As my first semester came to an end, I got a chance to take a well-deserved break and breathe a sigh of relief after finals. This program, as a lot of my seniors and peers would have put it, is intellectually stimulating and academically intriguing, especially for those disconnected from school lives. The academic intensity, I can say, is a variable and is directly proportional to how long one has been away from school. This is where the outstanding instructors play an immense role in getting you motivated back to wearing your backpacks and burning that midnight oil. It’s not only academics that you pick up along the way, but the motivation and the ability to balance family, work, social and academic life is a skill that gets instilled along the way, one you will never forget in the future.

So how did I get here and what have I learned so far? Long before I started this program, I knew I wanted to learn how other leaders have the ability to facilitate major changes across organizations. Every organization should have a strong foundation built on top of core values, trust, and confidence between their employees and customers. Every leader should be able to motivate his/her employees to work as a productive team to further innovate new products and strategies while maintaining morale and ethical values. Our Leadership and Organizational Behavior course concentrated on these topics while providing various examples of both good and bad leaders, noting their actions and showcasing the decisions they make. This course not only defined who a true leader was and analyzed the characteristics of various leaders, but helped with some self-analysis to evaluate yourself as a leader and see where you stand as one.

You’ve probably discussed the idea of buying a house, and while doing so, you probably considered different cities/neighborhoods as your options. After discussing with your family, and after visiting a few, you probably decided on one that looked good for the money you’d be paying. Did you ever consider finding a pattern of why the rates are different in one neighborhood than the other? Were there factors affecting the price? Could it be the size of the house, school districts, or crime rate that affect the price pattern? If so, would you want to know what the impact on the rates are due to each factor? Wouldn’t this give you the power to decide rationally which factors are important to you that potentially affect your decision? The Statistics course taught us how one could make sense out of all this. It helps one with rational decision making when you have the facts and numbers handy. I don’t own a house yet, but you probably know my potential realtor is not going to be happy with all the questions I will be asking him/her.

A major part of my job as a strategic data analyst is to provide various reports to clients. I’ve never really understood why our accounting department is unhappy with some of the reports we send them. There were always changes requested to re-align the data or group them differently. The Financial accounting course has made me think like one of them, and now I can’t believe we’ve been delivering reports as such and spent the last month changing them around to better suit the client needs. A downside of thinking like an accountant – my car which used to be a prized possession, is now seen as a “depreciating asset” that I will have to write-off in sometime. Again, I couldn’t have asked for a more fun way to learn accounting than how Professor Limberg taught us. He is amazing at what he does and you’d never realize how well someone without prior accounting experience can now review a company’s financial statements and make sense out of it.

With classmates at Navaratri – an Indian festival of music and dance

In addition to the courses, instructors, coordinators and faculty, I consider my classmates to be my greatest assets, and they help make this experience complete. I learn the most from them, and their diverse backgrounds bring the best ideas to the table. Every class is different but I can very easily claim that I have the best classmates ever. I look forward to spending some quality time with each and every one of them and to get to know them a lot better. I can’t believe we’re already a semester down and have only 5 more to go. It has been a roller coaster so far and I hope it doesn’t stop, ‘cos I’m enjoying every minute of it!

Good and Bad Movies to Watch to Prepare for your MBA

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Kurt Mitschke

By Edward Hirsch, Texas MBA at Dallas/Fort Worth Class of 2013

Not all of us learn through reading, as modern educational psychologists can confirm. Many if not most people are visual or aural learners, and it is important to not fight the nature of your own development tools and strain your eyes on exhaustive texts keeping up with graduate class work. Despite what your parents may have tried to convince you of, movies are a perfectly reasonable tool for learning and understanding the world. After all, are you more likely to understand Hegelian Dialectics by reading Hegel’s own Phenomenology of Spirit, or by watching Alien versus Predator? So while you are cramming through your GMAT prep books, I offer the following study aids for your future in an MBA program and life as a business leader.

Glengarry Glen Ross

Glengarry Glen Ross

Grade: A+
Classes Needed For: All, Life

Before I started the MBA program here, I expressed to my then-boss that I suspected you would learn no more about business by earning an MBA than you would by just watching Alec Baldwin’s speech at the beginning of Glengarry Glen Ross every day for a year. Now four semesters in on my own MBA, this prediction turned out to be 100% true. Most classes are word-for-word recitals of this speech, or PowerPoint summaries there-in. Most modern grading systems even utilize this movie, as a professor will simply identify you as a “Blake”, “Roma”, “Williamson” or “Levine”. Aside from the Baldwin speech, Roma, Moss and Levine all provide excellent observations on people management and motivation principles. Simply put there is no movie on earth that will prepare you better for an MBA. Glengarry can be thought of as the Philosophy 101 of business school.

Trading Places

Trading Places

Grade: F
Classes Needed For: Advanced Finance

As you will learn in Advanced Finance, Trading Places is a terrible representation of how futures markets operate, trading strategies are formed, and insider trading actually occurs. This movie, when referenced in interviews with I-Banking (unrelated – you will learn in your MBA program that Investment Banking is called I-Banking to make it sound even more pretentious) firms will only secure guffaws and chortles from the interviewers, and not a call back. Furthermore, gorillas would not confuse a person dressed up in a gorilla suit for another gorilla, nor could Dan Aykroyd actually stuff an entire smoked salmon down his Santa suit.

Wall Street

Wall Street Grade: D
Classes Needed For: Economics, Finance

There are those who may try to convince you that Gordon Gecko is the archetype MBA programs strive to produce, and that the “Greed is Good” speech is the most important lesson for a future MBA/finance grad to learn. Now this is patently false as Alec Baldwin’s Glengarry speech is more important, and in general any Alec Baldwin character can probably be pin-pointed as a better business-leader archetype. But the real issue is that Michael Douglas’ speech doesn’t even compare to Danny Devito’s “Buggy Whip” speech in the drastically under-appreciated comedy Other People’s Money. While Gecko does a decent job encapsulating the operator’s dilemma between owners and management, Devito also works in a far better understanding of economics and strategic positioning of an organization. My advice – skip Michael Douglas in this one, and instead watch Devito in Other People’s Money, or even Batman 2.

Top Gun

Grade: B
Classes Needed For: Operations, International Business

Top Gun

Aside from Tom Cruise’s key commentary on establishing foreign relations with MiG fighter pilots (valuable for planning your international trip), the value of this movie is in Tom Skerritt’s monologue describing the origins of the Top Gun school, which you probably went to get popcorn during! Skerritt’s speech, while mostly historically oriented, helps describe the development of the OODA (Observe-Orient-Decide-Act) Loop. This will come up in the process improvement portion of operations management, and help you understand how to control and improve processes much deeper into the quote-unquote Danger Zone than Six Sigma.

Also, there is a surprising amount of volleyball played in MBA programs. Usually teams are larger than 2-on-2, but it’s still good strategy.

Gung Ho

Gung Ho

Grade: B
Classes Needed For: Managing People, Strategic Management, Operations

An oft-forgotten Ron Howard film featuring Michael Keaton, Gedde Wantanabe and George Wendt, Gung Ho is a great study for management and operations from the perspective of ‘80s car manufacturing. This film will both help you understand the management difficulties in overcoming cultural differences and give you context to the Toyota production philosophy, which will be referenced in management and operations again and again. Once you have seen this movie, you will realize that there are few manufacturing/factory issues that cannot be solved using the tactics utilized in this movie.

Notorious

Notorious

Grade: A
Classes Needed For: Accounting, Marketing, Strategic Management

Based on the life of Christopher George Latore Wallace a.k.a. Notorious B.I.G., Notorious is the 1b to Glengarry’s 1a in terms of important MBA movies. While Glengarry delves into the philosophy that must underline your life from here on out (“Nice Guy? I don’t give a #&%$!”), Notorious delves more into the grit of modern business. Marketing and personal differentiation, accounting and cash management, and how to not die are all key lessons of this film. At the very least, you should be intimately familiar with Mr. Smalls’ “10 Crack Commandments” before seriously attempting an MBA.

Texas MBAs Go to Ghana!

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Kurt Mitschke

By Cindy Liu, Texas MBA at Houston Class of 2014

As part of our education to understand conducting business internationally, nineteen Texas MBA students participated in the global trip to Ghana during the second week of December 2012. During this action-packed week, we visited three cities: Accra, Kumasi, and Cape Coast.

Day 1

We departed Friday, December 7 and arrived in Accra on the 8^th. Our stopover at Amsterdam was fun but cold. Warm and extremely humid weather greets us at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra. Everyone gets their luggage successfully at the chaotic baggage claim. We hop on the hotel shuttle and thus the first eventful night in Ghana ends.

Day 2

Sunday the 9^th begins with a scrumptious breakfast of kelewele (spicy fried plantains), fried rice, stir-fried mushrooms, and other western foods. We decide to kill time before checking into our next hotel that is arranged by the program to visit the Mall of Accra, which was a 10-minute drive. It wasn’t very different from any mall in America except for the different stores. People filled up the mall after morning church service ended at noon. We eventually left and moved over to the other hotel, where we met with the rest of the group for an orientation meeting. The group then departed for Oxford Street, a local hangout for American food at Frankie’s, at the suggestion of our tour guide, Awuku, to ease our stomachs. Half of us stuck around to walk the strip to take in the sights and half retired at the hotel.

View of the city of Accra, Ghana

My overall impressions are that Ghanaians are very friendly and that Accra is a clean and peaceful city. They had their national elections today but no clear results yet due to the close race.

Day 3

Monday the 10^th was a full day of sightseeing in Accra, Ghana’s capital. We drove around town while Awuku explained the history of the city and the country to us. Our first stop was at the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, which commemorates the man who helped Ghana claim its independence from British rule in 1957. Next, we stopped at an open-air market for an opportunity to purchase traditional Ghanaian arts and crafts using our negotiation skills. We then stopped at the Artist Alliance Gallery to admire professional artworks. Lunch was traditional Ghanaian fare that we had been anxiously waiting to try, which was delicious as expected. We then drove around the city some more and saw the Black Star Square, which was erected to celebrate Ghana’s independence. We also passed by the American embassy, which was massive. We then spent some time at the W.E.B. Dubois Center for Pan African Culture, which honors this African American man who fought for equality for blacks and was a good friend and mentor of Kwame Nkrumah. Before returning to the hotel, we drove around University of Accra campus, which sits atop a hill and has a good view of the city below. The day isn’t over yet; we were treated to a welcome Ghanaian dinner, accompanied by a traditional West African dance show, in which many of the students participated!

Days 4 & 5

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we conducted most of our company visits. Dr. Eric Hirst, the McCombs faculty member who accompanied us on this trip, kicked off the visits with an introduction of everyone and explained to our hosts our visit’s purpose is to understand why one should choose to conduct business in Ghana, and what some particular challenges are. Our first visit was at Kosmos Energy, which is an oil and gas exploration and production company based in Dallas, Texas. Their Ghanaian company was the first to find the only producing oilfield off the coast of Ghana, and they are currently working with other partners to find more. This visit was fruitful because many of our classmates work in the oil and gas industry. After a delicious Spanish tapas lunch, we move on to our second visit at GE Ghana, which was organized by a couple of classmates who work at GE. It became apparent by the second visit that many Ghanaians are actually “repatriates,” or native-born Ghanaians who have moved away for education and even work for some part of their adult lives who have decided to come back to Ghana for the unique work opportunities. For example, the CIO of GE Ghana explains that he was able to move to such a high level position by making the move back to Ghana, and thus have had much more exposure and access to the various CEOs and President of GE than he ever did working for GE in New Jersey. We then asked them to describe the adjustments they made when they returned. We also asked the local Ghanaians who never moved away the differences of working for an American company in Ghana.

Our company visits continued on Wednesday with Bank of Ghana in which the staff delivered a formal presentation regarding the history and current banking policies of Ghana. They then treated us to a tea hour where we mingled with the staff and asked more questions. We also had a productive lunch meeting with representatives from Golden Tulip West Africa while noshing over delicious Thai-Ghanaian fusion food. Our last visit of the day was at Standard Chartered Bank, which is one of the largest banking companies in the Africa and the Middle East. This visit gave a good contrast to the visit earlier that morning as for understanding banking from a corporate perspective. We quickly wrapped up the day and hit the road for Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana that is about a five-hour drive from Accra.

Day 6

In the morning, we hit the road again for a special company tour—we are visiting a startup commercial farm located next to Lake Volta, the largest man-made reservoir in the world, located about four hours away by bus from Kumasi. The managing director of Africa Atlantic Franchise Farms picked us up in a ferry to go across the lake to go to the farm. We landed at a small village located next to the farm and met some of the locals to see how they lived, as well as visited a school that was newly built for the children in the surrounding villages. We were treated to a home-cooked meal of BBQ chicken and fried rice while the farm staff talked about the history of the farm, its present successes and challenges, and its future goals. After enjoying the outdoors and walking around the farm for a few hours, it was time to return to Kumasi.

Texas MBA Students Visit with local School Children in Ghana

Visiting with local school children

Day 7

Our last full day on the itinerary was sightseeing at Cape Coast, a port city where most African slaves were held in dungeons that were underneath castles built by Europeans. We visited two such places—the Cape Coast Castles and the Elmina Castle. Then we checked in to the beautiful Elmina Beach Resort where we concluded the trip with a farewell dinner with good food and music on the beach.

Texas MBAs Talk

Straight from the students

Category Archives: Dallas/Fort Worth