From Olympic sponsorships to Obamanomics...

Chicago GSB was in the news last week for some very interesting reasons:

Obamanomics: CBS carried news about Prof. Goolsbee’s work with the Obama team to formulate much needed economic prescriptions for the American economy. It talks about Goolsbee standing out from the ‘Chicago’ school of thought, which in my opinion, is an integral part of the ‘Chicago’ school of thought (questioning everything). Some of us who had chosen Goolsbee’s course “Economics and Policy in Media, Technology and Telecom” had the highest expectations from this course and most of them were fulfilled. Not only did the class help us understand why the telecom industry is shaped the way it is, but also made a strong case for the role of government policy in shaping the structure of an industry – quite fascinating and incredibly insightful. The prof’s dedication to teaching is legendary; his web-page has a photo of him in his wedding tux, in the classroom… as is obvious, he has an amazing sense of humor and this takes the edge off the heated debates that usually happen in class. Check out his obit for Milton Friedman in the NY times – very much Chicago, of course.
PS: The best part about this class is that Goolsbee allows auditors – so if you’re interested in his class and can make a meaningful contribution, you are allowed to get his permission and sit in class – without enrolling for the course! Some professors allow this if they see evidence that you can contribute (prior industry experience, future career interest etc) whereas others just allow you to join in the fun…isn’t that awesome?

WINning at the Olympics: Mark Konjevod, a GSB alum, never could get the odor out of his shirts after his marathon training runs. Instead of changing his detergent time and again, he set out to create a new product and ultimately ended up as the official detergent for the US Olympic team! You can check out his fascinating story at this WSJ link. This quarter, I have a course “Building the New Venture” by Waverly Deutsch – an amazing professor who teaches the everyday dynamics of entrepreneurship. Chicago GSB’s entrepreneurship faculty lineup is full of rock stars:
• Steve Kaplan who focuses on private equity and entrepreneurial finance.
• Scott Meadow who teaches “Commercializing Innovation”
• James Schrager and Susan Hapak who teach “New Venture Strategy”

Along with Waverly Deutsch and the Polsky Centre, these professors offer a great start to would-be entrepreneurs, covering the entire spectrum of conceptual and operation skills required to kickstart a new venture… no surprises when they go for the highest points in the course bidding process!



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Do you know what we did last summer?

Summer is an incredible time for most MBA students – at the GSB, full time MBA students use the summer to get hands-on work experience through internships at reputed companies, start-ups and non-profit organizations. Starting from mid-June to August, GSB grads stream out into the gritty, real world and attempt to apply what they have learnt in classrooms to real-time work environments.

The internships also help students experiment with new career options and try their hand at new functional areas and/ or new industries. This way, by end of summer, one forms a far clearer idea of what the industry/function to recruit for post-GSB. Quite a few firms also end up extending offers to their interns to come back and work full-time in their organizations.

Some examples of summer internships…

I did my summer internship in Europe at a large telecommunications firm on a segmentation strategy for their online business networking portal. It was incredible fun! The team was almost like a start-up… which of course meant that they needed everything yesterday! In the end, although it wasn’t exactly the “strategic planning” work that I originally wanted to do, many of my recommendations were implemented immediately and it was amazing to make an impact in just 2 months. More importantly, it was also an experience that gave me a great perspective of the organizational culture and the people at the company.

A friend of mine worked in London for a non-profit initiative that analyzed the causes of knife crime among juveniles in London, attempted to pin down causes and proposed solutions to the issue. This was, to say the least, thrilling and sometimes dangerous work – she had to travel to some not-so-safe neighborhoods and sometimes, meet with criminals… but she also adds that it was very fulfilling and the impact of such a project could actually mean more lives saved on the streets. What better application, I thought, of management skills could one imagine!

Another classmate landed an internship in Chile through the Polsky Centre. He helped an entre preneur decipher the legal environment in Chile and it's impact on the growth of the business. Not only was it an out-of-the world experience, but also a window into a different country, culture and language – this proud GSBer now knows a smattering of Spanish, can ‘almost’ change a flat tire even if stuck on the Andes, has frequented the best pubs and restaurants in Chile and most importantly, carries into his future a set of personal and business relationships forged over the last 2 months.

I hope this gives prospective students an idea of the work we do over the summer and the impact it has on the organization and on our career plans. With school starting off, we are all set to share our war stories with one another – if you’re at GSB Live, maybe you’ll hear a couple of them too!


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A New Year at Chicago GSB

With Fall quarter starting off, The Winter Garden has its familiar buzz of activity again! Most second year students strolled back into campus just a few days before classes kicked off; these veterans came back with many war-stories from summer internships, travels abroad and even weddings and new babies! Full-time recruiting is on and you can figure out the different ways in which different students handle it:Those with signed-off offers are chilling out and taking intense courses with ‘rock-star’ professors like Steve Kaplan and Scott Meadow; others have deep-dived into the recruiting pool, charging themselves up for networking and interviews… and then there are others with an offer from their internship trying hard to decide on whether to sign it off or not. But no matter what, the general feeling among second years is that it’s nice to be back!

GSB also welcomed the Class of 2010 to campus a few weeks ago. First year students come to campus about two weeks prior to the start of class for C.O.R.E. – a preparatory module that includes orientation and part of L.E.A.D. It’s always fun to see a group of energetic new faces meeting each other, starting classes, seeking career advice and in general, go through the GSB experience. They are getting used to both the intensity and fun of b-school and if you were to ask them how they felt, the answer would probably be "Great, but busy!" Amidst all this, we also have student groups trying to recruit new members for club activities, career services hosting career panels where second year students and alumni share their perspective on potential career paths and of course the omnipresent homework/ groupwork and class assignments. In Fall, there never is really a dull moment at the GSB!

There’s also the buzz throughout campus about the recent events on Wall Street. These are interesting times in finance and economics, both strongholds areas of Chicago GSB and it is not uncommon to find quite a few articles by our professors in major publications like the WSJ and NY Times. Prof. Goolsbee’s position as Obama’s economic advisor also adds an element of drama to those following the election trail at GSB. This is also the time of the year when the famous economic truth: TANFL(There Ain’t No Free Lunch) is regularly proven wrong – there are tons of events like LnLs(Lunch N Learns), Brown Bag lunches, the Distinguished Speaker Series where business and though leaders present their perspective eon diverse issues ranging from health policy to politics to emerging markets… food for thought, literally!

An interesting start to what promises to be an interesting year… watch this space – there’s lots more to come!

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International students, keep walking!

One of the toughest challenges that many international MBA applicants face is arranging financial aid for their education and living expenses. And this is where the top schools prove their worth, extending exceptional support to admitted students by offering scholarships and loans with trusted vendors. Chicago GSB was no exception; through an arrangement with IDAPP (Illinois Designated Account Purchase Program), all GSB students could avail of different loans, with or without co-signors...till now. With the credit crunch taking its toll, IDAPP will no longer be able to continue this arrangement into the future.

But hey, thanks to some fast and intrepid work by Priscilla Parker and team at the Financial Aid Office, we have a new lender on board with a faster online application process, to boot. Check out a recent ClearAdmit post that details the issue.

So if you are an international student and had concerns about the student loan program at GSB, no worries… its business as usual! With that off your mind, we hope that you can fully focus on the application process, especially with R1 deadlines around the corner – keep walking and good luck!

Making the most of a global summer!

Summer is a busy time for everyone at the GSB - the admissions team is busy planning for next year's process, the academic services team is planning course schedules and 1st year students disperse across the world to intern with different companies, applying a year's worth of management theories and models to the real world.

To make sure prospective applicants do not miss out on the fun, we have tons of admissions events over the summer. Ranging from education fairs to school-sponsored events to informal student receptions, the events bring GSB admissions staff and students to a city near you and help applicants get a personal perspective on the GSB experience. The details of the events and links for signup are at:

http://www.chicagogsb.edu/fulltime/admissions/events.

We hope these events will help you prepare for the application season and get you set for the exciting journey ahead! We look forward to meeting you at an event and will be excited to share our perspective on the b-school experience and everything else…under the summer sun!

The Armed Forces Group at Chicago GSB

The GSB Armed Forces Group is committed to easing the transition to business school for recently separated military service members. If you have any questions about moving to Chicago, getting acclimatized to GSB life, preparing for the summer internship recruiting process, or anything else, please feel free to contact one of the AFG co-chairs:

Scott Elliot- selliot1@chicagogsb.edu

Steve Gould- sgould1@chicagogsb.edu

Brian Bartlett- bbartlet@chicagogsb.edu

We’re working to set up a couple events next fall, so stay tuned and make sure you reach out to us so we can get you on the email distribution list.

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The New New Team

The new DSAC co-chairs for 2008-09 are:

• Lindsay Brehm
• Rebecca Libby
• Samuel Rozas
• Nelson Santhosh
• Jennifer Varela
• Fiteh Zegeye

We are in the middle of transitioning responsibilities and are really excited to be taking over from what was a diverse and incredibly dynamic team.

Here’s to a fantastic new year and building on all the good work done in 2007-08!

The Indian Tiger Roars Again... At Chicago GSB!

The South Asia Business Group at Chicago GSB is organizing The 4th annual Tata India Business Conference on May 17th. This year’s conference with the theme “India – A Winning Contender” promises a star-studded lineup of speakers, with panels headed by Dr.Arun Shourie (former Disinvestment Minister in the Union Cabinet), Mr.Luis Miranda (President & CEO, IDFC Private Equity), Mr.O.P. Bhatt (Chairman, The State Bank of India), Dr. Sam Pitroda (Chairman, Knowledge Commission of India) and Mr.Muthuraman (CEO, Tata Steel).

The time and venue of The Tata IBC 2008:

Date
8:30 am - 6:00 pm on May 17th, 2008
(Registration begins at 7:30 am)

Venue
Charles M. Harper Centre, Chicago GSB,
5807, S. Woodlawn Avenue,
Chicago 60637.

The conference website is at http://www.chicagogsb-ibc.com/ and the blog is http://chicagogsb-ibc.blogspot.com/.

If you are in Chicagoland in mid-May, we look forward to seeing you there!

GSB newswire

Here's a look at what's been happening at the GSB over the past few weeks:

Bill Gates, founder and chairman of Microsoft, visited campus on February 20 and gave a speech to students at the Harper Center. Gates talked about investing dollars where they are most needed, and how the Gates Foundation is trying to help. He pointed out that "less than 10 percent as much is spent on malaria as is spent on baldness. Malaria kills a million people a year." Gates emphasized that the current focus of businesses to innovate should incorporate innovations that will help the world's poorest citizens: "With all these rapid innovations - material science and cultural science, medical science, entertainment, the quality of video games, enhanced commercialism - we should really not just focus on what these breakthroughs mean for the richest two billion of the six billion on the planet." Gates also talked about some of his biggest challenges in managing people at Microsoft. “My mistakes were picking engineers and saying, well, if you’re a high IQ engineer, then you can manage people, basically on the belief that IQ is fungible,” he said, “because I don’t understand why it’s not. But it turns out, it’s not.” Over two hundred students packed into Room 104 of the Harper Center in an event that was so highly demanded that a lottery had to be conducted for tickets.

The webcast of this speech can be seen here.

In a recent New York Times article, Professor Austan Goolsbee said tax proposals by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama “would be fully paid for by closing business tax loopholes, cracking down on international tax evasion schemes” and restoring higher tax rates on some capital gains earned by the wealthiest taxpayers, according to an article published January 23. Professor Goolsbee is Obama’s senior economic adviser.

Clinical Professor Scott Meadow and Adjunct Associate Professor Linda Darragh were quoted in a Chicago Tribune article about entrepreneurs considering starting two businesses at the same time. “Look for a strategic link and a reason they fit together,” Professor Darragh said. “Unless I had Steve Jobs for both companies, I doubt I would consider backing someone who was working on two different deals,” Professor Meadow said in the February 11 article.

Gerald Beeson, MBA ’99 was promoted to COO of Citadel Investment Group LLC, a large hedge fund. Previously he was CFO of the fund which is based in Chicago. The announcement appeared in the February 7 edition of the Wall Street Journal.

Finally, over 300 students and their partners congregated at the River East Arts Center on February 23 for the 2008 Intrigue and Mystery Winter Formal. There were performances of old classics and modern hits by a live cover band, and this year's theme was a masquerade ball, so many students decided to get creative with their facewear. The setting was the dance hall of a modern art gallery overlooking the beautiful - and frozen - Chicago River. This event was put on by the Graduate Business Council. Thanks you guys for a great event!

Upcoming Admit Weekend

Congratulations to all our admits from Round I!

You have really impressed us with your experiences and qualifications, and we welcome you to the GSB community! We would like to take this opportunity to remind you about the upcoming Admit Weekend (March 7th). The Admit Weekend is a great way to get to know the school, the community and your fellow admits. We've got an exciting, informative and fun schedule lined up for you.

Here is what Becky - a 1st year student - has to say about it:

Hearing all the talk about Admit Weekend preparations here on campus reminds me of how I was feeling at this time last year. I was so excited to receive my acceptance from the GSB, but was a little nervous, kind of like a kid going off the summer camp. Would I know anyone? I had only communicated on the Admit Discussion Forum with a few other admits from the Washington, DC area. Would it be hard to make new friends? Was I going to freeze?

I can say now that my anxiety was unwarranted. I had a fantastic time at Admit Weekend, met some amazing people (who are some of my best friends today!), had a great time exploring the Harper Center here on campus and sitting in on a model class with the famous Kevin Murphy (and for those Freakonomics fans, Steve Leavitt sitting in the corner) and getting excited about taking microeconomics, hanging out downtown at Lucky Strike watching Rose try to bowl, and hearing about how much the current students loved the GSB. The weekend was a great start to my GSB career. Everyone I met was so excited to see me there, which eased any fears I had about not finding people to hang out with.

So, let me ease your anxieties, encourage you to make your plans for Admit Weekend and come have a fantastic time with us. Here are some logistical details to help you get started:

· Chicago has two airports: O’Hare and Midway. Midway is on the Orange “el” line that will take you into the downtown loop. O’Hare is much bigger and is served by all major airlines. It’s on the Blue “el” line which will also get you to the downtown loop. Information on public transportation can be found at http://tripsweb.rtachicago.com/.

· Hotel rooms certainly aren’t lacking in Chicago. Most people stay in downtown (GSB will run a shuttle from the downtown Gleacher Center to Hyde Park). The Admitted Student Website does have some suggested hotels here. Remember, weekends are a popular time to visit, so make your reservations early!

· Pack a coat. We’re realistic, Chicago can be chilly, and you’ll have much more fun if you are not cold. But take heart, the average temperature in March is in the 40’s.

· Get ready to have fun. If you talk to any first-year student who attended Admit Weekend last year, you’ll hear over and over again that Admit Weekend cemented the decision to attend GSB.

For more information, please visit this link on the admit website (requires login and password).
http://www.chicagogsb.edu/fulltime/admits/weekend/index.aspx


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