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Category Archives: Admissions
Welcome Weekend Breakout: Finance MBA & Real Estate MBA
At the finance/real estate session at Welcome Weekend Bill Christie, Jacob Sagi, and Emily Anderson discussed the curriculum, the faculty, and career opportunities in the finance and real estate fields. Whether you’re interested in banking, corporate finance, hedge funds, private wealth management, equity research, real estate, or any other finance related career, Owen has a strong curriculum designed to help get you there.
Of note in the Owen program is the fact that core finance is taken during Mod I. This allows students to quickly jump into finance electives by Mod II and ultimately have up to 6 finance courses before their summer internship. This requires careful coordination between the statistics and accounting professors due to the numerous concepts in those classes applied in finance, and ultimately creates a greater learning experience.
Speaking of the faculty, Bill Christie took some time to brag on some of his colleagues and their work to show the caliber of talent we house on the third floor at Owen. He told us about Hans Stoll who is known for his work on the put-call parity relation for option prices, Bob Whaley who created the Market Volatility Index (VIX), and Nick Bollen a hedge funds expert.
Posted in Admissions, Doug Midkiff '12, Why Owen? Tagged finance mba, real estate mba, welcome weekend 1 Comment
Welcome Weekend Breakout: Healthcare MBA
Standing before us is Professor Larry Van Horn, dressed uncharacteristically casual in a plaid shirt and jeans (he is famous on campus for his sport coat and bowtie combination). To his side sits Emily Anderson of the Career Management Center. Behind Larry the title slide of a presentation reads, “Learning to Lead in the Nation’s Healthcare Capital.”
Larry begins his presentation and immediately assumes his habit of bobbing about, capturing the audience with his passion for the healthcare industry and its future in the United States, or, in Larry’s words: “How we are coming un-glued due to healthcare.”
One of Larry’s favorite tactics is to joke casually, speaking in what surely must be hyperbole, only to then hit you with the bomb of factual information. His mind is a treasure trove of statistical information concerning U.S. healthcare. Without gazing at the screen he tells us how the healthcare industry currently comprises 17.5% of America’s GDP.
“A matter of national security,” he says, and the audience of eighteen of us laughs. What’s he talking about?
“Once it hits 22.5% of GDP,” Larry explains, “it affects our ability to fund National Defense.”
The room falls silent.
Posted in Admissions, Ravi Venkataramani '12, Why Owen? Tagged health care mba, welcome weekend 1 Comment
Welcome Weekend Breakout: Human & Organizational Performance MBA
The Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) session featured Professor Tim Gardner and John Hamilton from the Career Management Center speaking to a group of just over a dozen of us.
Tim began by emphasizing how Owen is unique in its offer of HOP as an MBA concentration. HOP students learn to manage human assets versus the dollars and decimals of the more (perhaps) typical concentrations, to which other schools often restrict their curriculums. Owen’s own Allison May, Class of 2012, summed up the importance of and the place for HOP quite nicely in a previous blog post:
“[HOP involves] attracting, motivating and retaining top talent, and as the US shifts increasingly into a service-based economy (and, arguably, a brain-based economy), this is increasingly important.”
Back in Room 216, Tim painted a picture of how the HOP program is more than just the sum of its courses, of which Strategic Alignment of Human Capital and Leading Change are required and the electives—including such favorites as Negotiation and Innovation Strategy—number a total of fourteen. Instead of the usual classroom shuffle, HOPers consistently work in teams, conduct both in-and-out of class negotiations, and participate in live case studies, often allowing for independent study. This is not to mention the Human Capital Case Competition, an annual national case competition founded at Owen and sponsored by Deloitte, wherein industry executives judge teams’ abilities to solve real human challenges.
Posted in Admissions, Ravi Venkataramani '12, Why Owen? Tagged human organizational performance, welcome weekend 2 Comments
Budgeting For Your MBA
While it is important to quickly learn how to manage your time while in your MBA program, most don’t consider another important MBA, Managing Bank Accounts. It is easy to take your eye off of your personal economics when you get a lump sum check. If you’re on a student loan budget, lunches out, coffees, etc. start to add up. There was a noticeable change in spending behavior between mods 1 and 2 and mod 3. By December of my first year, classmates started going out less and were looking forward to the spring semester check to come through. I would have felt more comfortable with that check too. In mods 3 and 4 there was a clear increase in the number of classmates bringing in lunch. That’s not to mean you shouldn’t have lunches, coffees, etc., but you’ll need to keep in mind the tradeoffs and with proper planning, maybe you can have a little bit of both.
Here are some nuggets of wisdom I’ve picked up through my first year.
Posted in Admissions, Cam Johnson '11, Graduate Life Leave a comment
Welcoming Admitted Students
Decisions, decisions, decisions. It seems like just yesterday that we were in the position of making the tough choice amongst the business schools we were considering, including Owen. We went through the typical thought process…thinking about what we wanted to get out of an MBA program, what was important to each of us and what we thought we could contribute to and get out of each program. Though that got us closer to a decision, it still wasn’t good enough. In true MBA style, we both remember making spreadsheets to compare each school against a set of self-created criteria…everything from location to class size, to reputation and job placement rate.
In reflecting back on that memory that seems too long ago, we realized that what truly made the difference was visiting each school. It was walking onto the campus, making that first connection with a staff, student or professor, and eating meals with potential future classmates that made the decision for us. It was during our recent Welcome Weekend activities at Owen that we were reminded of how special the Owen MBA program is and why we chose it over the other great business schools we were considering. You can make all the charts you want, but there’s something about a visit that really shows you the essence of a school and allows you the opportunity to feel for yourself what the marketing materials try so hard to convey. During this year's Welcome Weekend we saw “the other side” (working with the Admissions Department to plan the event) of what makes Owen really shine.
Posted in Admissions, Guest & Alumni Bloggers, Why Owen? Leave a comment