I actually want to get letters of recommendations.
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Note to self: If I ever have an underling come up to me and ask me for a letter of recommendation, grab nearest sharp object, make stabbing motion towards source of request and run far away.
I already had my recommenders lined up, but I finally got around to sending out the formal letter requests through the school's application websites. I took a peek at what my recommenders actually had to do, and I nearly shit. Jesus Christ, do they have to write a lot. Furthermore, none of the letters are remotely similar. There was no way in hell I'd get these people to write 7 completely different letters. These aren't your ordinary simple, "omg i think b skool is grate 4 him," kind of letters. And if you applied to Stanford? They expect recommenders to write some pretty intense responses.
I actually dropped Dartmouth and Michigan off of my list of schools I will apply to, solely to keep the number of recommendation letters lower. The last thing I want to happen is to have them do a half-assed job because there's so much writing to do and have that fuck me somewhere along the way.
I ended trying to group different questions from different school together to try and reduce the amount of work that they'd have to do, but I know this is still asking a lot. Since my company is really just a mass congregation of alcoholics, I'm just hoping that they stay relatively sober over the next month so that they a) actually finish these things and b) sound somewhat coherent in their endorsement of me.
posted by mbahunt @ 3:58 PM,
,
A well thought out decision.
Monday, November 06, 2006
It has been decided that I will apply to the following schools:
1. Harvard
2. Wharton
3. Kellogg
4. Chicago
5. Stanford
6. Michigan
7. Dartmouth
This was a very deliberate and thought out decision that took me at least 25 minutes to conclude. I'm not really sure why I waited so long to decide this, because I knew deep down inside I was just going to wait until BusinessWeek came out and announced their rankings for this year. It looks like I have more than a little work to do for the "Why this school?" essay.
A pretty sweet graphic was shown in the magazine's issue, though, as it ranked the top 10 and bottom 10 for average amount of years to break even. The 10 schools you will earn your investment back fastest? No name schools you'd never think of. The 10 schools that will take you forever to earn back? Only the best 10 in the nation. At MIT, the average tuition plus living expenses plus 2 years of foregone pre-MBA salary is a measly $324,305. With an average salary premium betwenn pre-MBA and post-MBA earnings is $21,500. At that rate, your average Sloan MBA takes 15.08 years to break even financially.
I really admire those who are going to Sloan, because they truly love the art of business. God knows they're not doing it for the money.
posted by mbahunt @ 10:29 PM,
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