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Tag Archives: business school
Fall International Trip: Japan 2012
Over the Fall Break from classes, a group of 30 Owen students went on a school-sponsored International trip to visit Japan. This is an account of the trip from one of the second-years who enjoyed the trip.
Day 1 (Thursday):
Technically, the trip began on this night where everyone first gathered at our hotel in Fukuyama but a few of us who arrived the day before in the city of Osaka where we toured several landmarks such as Osaka Castle, Tsuutenkaku Tower, and Shitennou Temple before we took a bullet train to meet everyone in Fukuyama.
Posted in Graduate Life, Guest & Alumni Bloggers, OwenBloggers Tagged business school, International Experience, Japan, travel 1 Comment
A Day in the Life of a Second Year MBA Marketing Student
Thursday
7:00am: Wake Up (significantly later than on M/W, when I have an 8am class)
7:45am: Do the dishes, eat breakfast and drink my coffee while checking my email and my to-do list for the day. Read the news. Look at LinkedIn, and notice a change to LinkedIn profiles – email Anne Marie (our resident LinkedIn expert) to ask her opinion on the change.
8:30am: Head to school. Do research for my Pricing team presentation. We’re presenting on the topic of Luxury Apparel and the pricing strategies that are employed in that industry.
9:40am: Pricing Strategies Class. There’s a student team presentation on Dynamic Restaurant pricing, followed by discussion. Afterwards, there is a guest speaker on conjoint analysis related to pricing, and a discussion on how Apple determined its price for the new iPad Mini (definitely not through conjoint).
11:10am: Grab a snack downstairs from the Mapco 810 Café
11:20am: Strategic Alignment of Human Capital Class. Discussion on different frameworks for Strategic HR and how they relate to a case we had just read.
Posted in Graduate Life, OwenBloggers, Stephanie Dozier '13 Tagged business school, innovation, marketing, mba, owenbloggers Leave a comment
Health Care Immersion Week
With Mod 1 final exams over in October, many of my classmates began a well-deserved weeklong break from school. As a first-year Health Care MBA, however, I prepared for the first step in earning the “health care” part of my degree: Immersion Week. I, like most of my fellow Health Care MBA’s, came to Owen specifically for the health care specialization and had been hearing about Immersion Week and its purpose—experiencing the clinical side of health care before starting our education on the business side—for months. I had signed up for my clinical rotations, sent in my scrub sizes, picked up my Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) badge, and was ready to go.
One of the most anticipated (and for some, scary) parts of the week was the operating room rotations. I arrived at VUMC bright and early on my assigned day, suited up in hospital scrubs, cap, mask, and booties, and was ushered through an OR door. Soon, I was standing a few feet away from two plastic surgeons as they tried to save a motorcycle accident victim’s leg from amputation by repairing blood vessels and applying skin grafts. Fortunately I’m not squeamish because the injuries were severe enough that the nurses seemed concerned I might faint just looking at the leg before the surgery even began. I walked out afterwards never wanting to ride a motorcycle, but before going under anesthesia the patient insisted that he would be back on his soon.
Posted in Graduate Life, Guest & Alumni Bloggers, Industry Insights, OwenBloggers Tagged business school, healthcare, immersion, mba, owen, owenbloggers Leave a comment
Outside the Comfort Zone: Corporate Valuation
I took Corporate Valuation Mod 1 this year. This offering is dubbed “Corp Val for Poets” because anyone with an interest in Finance would have taken it first year, leaving those of us studying marketing, HOP, and Operations to take it this year. Taking Corp Val was a choice that caused many of my fellow marketing concentrators to ask “Why did you do that??” There’s definitely no denying that it’s outside of my comfort zone. However, I think that’s part of what we’re all here for – to challenge ourselves and to do things that may not be easy or even particularly enjoyable.
I told my two teammates that I was going to write this blog, and one turned to the first-year next to us and stated “Don’t listen to her.” The other advised me, “Wait ‘til we get our final exam grades.” The class was not easy. It’s my second year, I have an offer, and I could have been coasting along. But instead I spent 10 hours every weekend pouring over financials and trying desperately to figure out how to do valuation by multiples or risk neutral pricing or something else that I’d never heard of.
Posted in Graduate Life, Stephanie Dozier '13 Tagged business school, corporate valuation, finance, mba, study 1 Comment
On Grades
It is a common trope here at business school that grades don’t matter.
Judging from the amount of hours that most students put in at the library, one might assume that this maxim is some sort of game theory-driven bluff to fool the meek and gullible away from the battlefield. For those of us who have spent a lifetime in a system that rewards only grades as a gauge of learning, in some cases fostering the perverse incentive to take easier and less challenging courses, it can be hard to break old habits.
But in business school, grades should not drive your course selection. Don’t opt out of Corporate Valuation or Derivatives if you’re concerned it will hurt your GPA, even if you consider yourself more of a “soft skills” person. This is your chance to learn this material from industry experts. For most of us, business school is an educational safety net in addition to a career reset button. It serves as a last chance to learn dense academic material in a “safe” setting. After this, almost all of our learning is “on the job,” meaning the ramifications of mistakes are a lot more dire than a poor grade.
Posted in Clark Bosslet '12, Graduate Life Tagged business school, grades, mba, vanderbilt Leave a comment