Adventures of absent-minded MBA student

I am back

2007-01-12T00:02:00.000Z

Hi, I am still here, came back from home - holidays were great, saw all my friends and family, did not want to come back. Promise to post detailed report on milk round this week end. Hugs

À la recherche du temps perdu

2006-12-16T23:58:00.000Z

Wow, it’s been a long time and some bad and some good things happened to me since my last post. So I am afraid this one will be a bit hectic. Today was officially the very last day of the term – we needed to submit last take home exam, microeconomics. The deadline was noon, guess when I submitted it – at 11.59, this is the second take home exam and the first time I did much better – 10 minutes before the deadline. I actually had to take a cab to be able to do it and for the first time was not wearing make up to school (girls will understand it’s a really serious crime…), but I had those 10 minutes. You can imply we had very little time for those take home exams – wrong we had 10 days. What was I doing? Many extremely important things apart from the exam. And when I finally started to do it, I could not stop… I have this terrible tendency to “fall in love” with things (not only with things though); so I read about 30 scientific articles and 3 books in order to answer question that required 800 words. Have I just a bit overdone? Well, that’s me…
And because I am not very good in managing time, as you probably noticed, I had 1 day course dedicated to that matter. And I even managed to be on time from one of the breaks – you see, I am improving. The course was actually great – I finally was able to admit the fact that I need self-discipline, because before that I was kind of sure it’s incompatible with my “creative nature”. Wrong, wrong, wrong – it’s just the poor excuse we are normally ready to rely on.
Another course we had was “Influencing and persuading” and this one was great as well – we practiced different persuading styles – asserting, attracting, bridging and proposing (and guys proposing is not about marriage, you normally don’t need a master of persuasion to make the girl accept your offer). I am quite good in manipulation, but I guess this is not the skill, future leaders need to possess, so I decided to leave “the dark side of the force”. I think I was completely miserable in asserting, because I tried to sound strong and authoritarian, but was looking to other person’s eyes like a lost dog. But I liked it – I wish I had more practice.
The other thing was that I met Patxi and it was great. I was nervous, because you know, he had those very nice posts about me and I was worried that the real “me” will not be the one who deserves those posts. But Patxi is extremely interesting and easy to talk to, so I have not noticed how the time passed. The same day I was at the St. Nicolaus party at Angie’s place – the party was fun, I enjoyed it a lot and I met Patxi’s wife, who is also nice and enjoyable person. So you see, bloggers’ world somehow made my real world a better place.
What else, we had Santa Claus Pub Crawl – a big school tradition, but I think many people have written about it already, so just go to the link and watch.
And I guess that’s it for today. Sweet dreams boys and girls..

Christmas is in the air

2006-12-03T23:04:00.000Z

This week I had a cold and fever, so I missed a lot of classes and stayed in bed. My dream came true, but in a somehow twisted way- as you all know it's not much fun to stay at home, when you have 39... So, by the week-end I started to operate in a stand by mode, which means I have done nothing in terms of home tasks and exam preparations, nada... Which is bad, taking into account the fact that I need to submit accounting homework tomorrow in the morning.
Yesterday, I was going home in the evening from the party (yes, now I feel much better) and saw a Christmas tree in somebody's window. I was standing and watching the tree and suddenly felt great (surprise,surprise)- somehow London is not my prison and LBS is not my term in jail any more and probably I am not lost anymore as well. I don't know, whether it's because Christmas is one of my favorite holidays or because I found new friends, but it's just pure magic.
These weeks I had 2 mock interviews - one is with consulting club and another with finance club. This is a great practice tool and I really appreciate the effort of second year MBAs, who are organising them for us. I have several feedbacks, first is that I can think (though I still doubt :-)), second that during the interview I look like I am ready to faint at any moment (probably not the best tactics) and third that I am looking at the interviewer like he is breaking my heart (still in doubts, about this one - normally it works with men, but am not sure about employers:-)).
And the last but not the least thing - there is another new blog, King Myles, a great guy from LBS MBA 2007 has started, so I definetely recommend you to read it.

Banking, consulting and....gambling?!

2006-11-28T23:34:00.000Z

I promised that this time, my blog entry will be more practical (my last post was completely off topic and probably seemed weird, but this is me, when I am into something, I can’t stop). So, I’ll do my best. Last week I took part in 2 different business competitions (this is one of the advantages of the London business school- you can be engaged in different business simulations and case competitions as much as you want to). Here are my key learning points
First event was organized by Morgan Stanley , it was portfolio management simulation, held in their offices at Canary Wharf.
I always had mixed feelings about Canary Wharf, from the one side as an aspiring investment banker I am supposed to be excited by the view of towers in the night sky, from the other side, the atmosphere there reminds me a lot of a movie I Robot . You know, when robots seized the earth and started to exterminate people. One of my fellow students told me yesterday, that this is very particular area of London, where the population is limited by men and women from 20 to 55 –you will never meet a child or an old person there. So all people are dressed in equally expensive black suits, are rushing to equally faceless office cubicles, with equal expression of concern on their faces. Do I really want to join the army?
Anyway, I liked the office a lot, because the building is not tall (I am afraid of heights), people look human and there are even attractive men working for Morgan Stanley. We were split into 15 teams of 7 people and given 1,5 hours to manage 100 mil for 6 consecutive periods of 8 months . During 10-20 minutes we needed to split our money and invest them in equity, fixed income or real estate in Europe, US or Asia, after that we listened to the news, giving microeconomics trends for the last and future periods and were given the return on our investment. Of cause, the winner must have the largest return on the investment. My team had very stable and medium results, that’s why at the last round we decided to gamble and … had the medium result again (in Russia, there is a saying, that if you’re unlucky in gambling, you will be lucky in love – I hope that’s the case with me). The simulation of cause was quite far from the real job of trader, but I think it’s very much fun and actually the group who won was not gambling – they had solid strategy from the very beginning.

The second event – was LEK strategy case competition. We were given a case and had one week to come up with the presentation of the solution. First of my learning – it’s very hard to come up with a good solution, when you’re not interested in the subject. And this is something I really want to change about myself, because, unfortunately, in real life not everything is exciting… So Chinese traditional medicine is not the most exciting subject to me… Then we had very diverse team and each of us had different view on the problem. Instead of discussing everything before the actual presentation, each of us preferred to keep his/her own opinion and to agree to joint solution. Moreover, we decided that only 2 people will be presenting and other 2 will be answering questions. As a result, I think the jury was genuinely puzzled, when we recommended the poor company to do all at once, and answers to questions were completely different to statements from presentations. Just to give an example: Jury, “In presentation you said you want to increase number of stores in China, but they are unprofitable now”, we, “No, actually we want to close our shops in China and go abroad”.., No wonder we were not selected for finals. So, my advise – you really need to have common vision before the presentation and talk to each other actually helps.

Unholy war?

2006-11-27T18:44:00.000Z

Yesterday I spent 3 hours, reading different accounts on death of the former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko. Normally, I am not very much into politics, but this murder has wide coverage in the press and it’s my country involved. Russian and Foreign press of cause have completely different opinions on what have happened – and the main point of differentiation is whether Russian government and Mr. Putin in particular are involved. All Russian account consider Litvinenko as traitor whose words were not dangerous for government since long time, all western press mentions the fact that he worked on the book on Checnia, which probably somebody didn’t want him to finish.
I don’t want to sound pathetic, but I am proud by the fact that I am Russian and love my country very much, however certain events in the recent history and the course that our government selected, make me ashamed and lost. There were quite a few journalists killed recently - Yuri Sheckochikhin , Anna Politkovskaya and Paul Khlebnikov. Owner of once forth largest oil company of the world “Yukos”, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was accused in fraud and tax evasion and put into jail for 9 years, whereas some other Russian oligarchs, who accumulated their fortunes the same way he did, but are loyal to the government continue to head largest resource companies in Russia and are buying UK football teams and Faberge eggs. At the same time, government acquired major stakes in oil and gas companies, which are formally private, nationalizing the best pieces of Russian business.
One of my American friends, who has been living and working in Russia for a long time, once told me that, when Mr. Eltzin was our president, corruption was sporadic, whereas Mr. Putin made it legal, it’s incorporated into our laws and our minds (not that I think that American society enjoys real freedom and democracy though). And sadly, I pretty much agree with this statement. And I don’t think that I am the only one, but…. I am sure that we will elect the person, who would be “recommended” by Mr. Putin as our next president and our politics will be determined by the same people it is determined by now. So much about national consciousness….

Anyway, Mr. Litvinenko was poisoned by Palladium 210 and was dying for several days, experiencing a lot of pain, he left very passionate testament, accusing Mr. Putin in his death, which made him a hero in the yes of the British press and enemy in the eyes of their Russian colleagues. As far as I spent a lot of hours, reading about the question, I would like to share some info sources I found interesting: Wikipedia-the neutral one, the blog, that supports him a lot, the one who discusses many controversial facts, especially long-time connections of Mr. Litvinenko and Mr. Berezovsky, first Russian billionaire, who is actively trying to overthrow Russian government. You can find the full text of Mr. Litvinenko book “BLOWING UP RUSSIA: Terror from Within” as one of the links in this blog, if you read in Russian, the second book, called “Лубянская преступная группировка”, here. The allegations he makes in his book are to my mind too depressing to be the truth – future president gives an order to blow up 2 apartment buildings in Moscow (more than 300 people died) and re-starts the war in Chechnya in order to have effective election campaign… This shows that the reality might be much more brutal than any movie (have you seen Wag the dog - it’s one of my favorite).
My last point to this very long post is that of cause I sympathize to Mr. Litvinenko’s family and appreciate what he has done in terms of protecting the freedom of Russia, but his depiction as a saint by Western media seems to me very extreme. The guy worked for KGB for quite a few years and was promoted quite fast, which means he was good at what he was doing and shared the values of this organization. He then selected to struggle against the things he struggled for before – but we will never know his motivation and Mr Berezovskiy, who supported Litvinenko, can’t be characterized as a brave freedom fighter in any sense…

up close and personal

2006-11-18T00:23:00.000Z

OK I’ve done the useful part last time, so I just want to write about personal impressions so far.
To me somehow MBA is a program of extremes – it’s like a rollercoaster, when at certain moments you are flying high above the ground, but at others you’re so close to it, you don’t know if you survive…
When people are describing MBA, they refer to the time as best in their lives, but there are some things I wish I have known about MBA in advance:
· First very simple thing, which is very hard to get used to – how hard it is financially. Probably, London is not the cheapest place to live in and probably LBS is not the cheapest program, but it’s really hard. All of us worked before and had certain life style – mine included getting out with friends, travels and many presents for those I love. JUST FORGET ABOUT IT. The earlier the better. I am here on my own and I work part time to pay for my apartment and bills and the most luxurious indulgences I can afford are strawberries for breakfast (sometimes) and Mango shower cream (because I am absolutely addicted to both) – not much. When I just came to London I could not adopt very fast and continued my normal life which resulted in the fact that I have spent 5 times more then I expected in the first month. So probably the orientation program should include course called “Effective money management” or “How to survive without money” – I am sure the course will be very popular especially among girls.
· Secondly and much more importantly for me – how very often superficial are the relationships among people. Maybe, it’s cultural thing and my perception is influenced by certain stereotypes, it doesn’t help to feel better however. When you are new in the environment, you try to know as many people as possible, just not to feel lonely. This means that people do the first step very easily, but then most of them do not have strength to make the second. As a result you have many acquaintances and almost no friends – you are always surrounded by people and you are always lonely. The fact that people are very often extremely competitive (and probably I am one of those people:-() makes communication even more difficult. I have not figured out how to overcome this barrier, but noticed that in many cases people stay very reserved.
· The last thing is stress – I always worked hard and almost always in a very stressful environment (you know, Russian business also reminds me of a rollercoaster), but here I feel the pressure much more then I used to do at work. So, my advice is to expect a lot of pressure and to try to protect yourself somehow. And by the way, the fact that you’re on the dean’s list doesn’t guarantee you’re a great person and internship at UBS doesn’t transform you to god (please, don’t tell UBS, though).

· Now about good things. My birthday was couple of weeks ago and my whole stream (70 people) was singing “Happy Birthday” to me, later that day I had a dinner with my new friends (yes, despite above said I do have friends here) and they said a lot of good things to me. Complete surprise – not that I think that I don’t deserve good thingsJ, but it’s so nice to feel that somebody cares about you.
· My friends from Moscow came to me last week and we spent great time together. For the first time after the studies started I have not done anything connected to MBA for a whole day (I have not slept for 2 nights after, but it doesn’t count). We were walking a lot, went to STOMP show and had a lot of fun. Now I know where to take my parents in summer J - they do not speak English, but for STOMP it’s not necessary.
· I am doing acting classes – and it’s much fun also. As every girl, from the age of 12 to 15, I received a lot of Oscars and had plans to marry Johnny Depp , but then he has chosen Vanessa Paradis (without even asking me first) and I started to study math…. So MBA gave me an opportunity to feel myself a movie star again. I can’t say that it’s easy for me, but the teacher is great and the group is very supporting.

I think I can go on forever …. And yes, next time it will be practical again (about Morgan Stanley “portfolio in peril” simulation).

The importance of being practical

2006-10-31T20:48:00.000Z

First of all, because I have received a lot of comments from my friends on my previous post, I would like to say that when I was writing about Enron and Mr. Vayner I by no means was supporting their actions. However, I was impressed by the fact that society very often prompts this kind of behavior and sometimes you need to be REALLY strong to resist the pressure.
Somehow I understood that my posts lack the practical information and will try to divide them into 2 parts: practical (that you probably wanna read) and personal (that you probably wanna skip if you don’t like my stile).
The practical side today is about how you can prepare better for the course, if you’re admitted already.

As you know LBS has quite strong reputation in finance, so a lot of people select this area as their concentration. But unfortunately visualizing yourself as a financial guru is not enough. And if quantitative side is not one of your best, you need to study in advance. Finance 1 is the most dreaded exam in the first term (though 2/3 of the boys are desperately in love with our brilliant finance professor – Francesca Cornelli). Our main text book is Corporate Finance by Richard A. Brealey, Stewart C. Myers, Franklin Allen and I strongly recommend you to have at least a look prior the beginning of the studies, especially if English is not your native language and you are not familiar with basic concepts in finance.

You need to be able to manage your time and set priorities, otherwise you will be buried under endless number of home tasks and articles (that’s what happened to me - it is 12.45 a.m. and I am still half done with my homework). It may sound pretty obvious, but believe me it’s hard. Though prior my MBA I had senior managerial position and was responsible for multi-functional activities, somehow it doesn’t work here.

You need to do at least preliminary research about industry you wanna walk in after the school. Opportunities and consequently number of activities associated with them are almost endless here, but as it’s mentioned in the second bullet – you only have 24 hours per day. Milk round (i.e job hunting season) starts in January and it is only 4 months since you began your studies. And if in previous life you are sometimes used to calm yourself with the fact that you are one of the brightest people to select from, here it will not work – you will compete with the very talented and diverse students. So, try to select max. 2 major areas you are interested in. The useful resources are: Vault and Wetfeet , which both have excellent industry guides as well as interview guides for consulting and finance. The book What Color Is Your Parachute?: A Practical Guide for Job-Hunters and Career Changers will help you to have systematic approach to your job hunt, it will also help you not to lose the sense of humor.

And finally, as you probably know investment banking and consulting are differentiated from other industries not only by the nature of the job but also by a very specific interview process. So, if your interests lay in one of those fields a little preparation will not harmJ. The book Case in Point: Complete Case Interview Preparation will give your good understanding about case interview process for consulting and the book Heard on the Street: Quantitative Questions from Wall Street Job Interviewswill familiarize you with the problems you might expect to encounter at the banking interview.

No personal part today - I'm half asleep already, so sweat dreams boys and girls.

The importance of being honest

2006-10-23T23:57:00.000+01:00

It's been a long time since I was able to write something here... Meanwhile life is going on and a lot of things happened, which I wish I could share with you. But unfortunately there are only 24 hours in 1 day, though lately I'm doing my best to make it slightly more.
We have tremendously many things at school - it seems like our professors are having internal competition on whose home task is bigger and how many group projects is it possible to squeeze into one class. The classes are mostly fun, especially microeconomics (all the girls are already members of professors fun club) and finance (the same story but with boys). But my poor brain is struggling with the amount of information it needs to absorb. Career services are also part of this internal competition and they definitely want to win - we have career events almost every night - companies' representatives come on campus and try to tempt us with different career options... In my case, for last 2 days investment banking is the winner.
You can ask what it all has to do with the caption? It's a long and complicated story, but on one of the Ethics classes we discussed Enron and Andersen case and their ethical standards. Which somehow, made me very curios about the subject and I spent several hours searching the net for Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Parmalat etc. Buy the way, their websites at the moment are like monuments to the past, only week echo of their power (they still have the sites, but the only information you can find there is what investors should expect in future).
I read all those articles and thought - it's amazing how persistent the corporate culture is today in encouraging people for governance abuse, at the same time if somebody's got caught how persistent it is in condemning them. Companies are expected to deliver higher and higher results every year, the pressure to succeed is enormous, and somehow honesty in business is completely devalued. People can receive awards today for the same things that will be considered criminal later.
The other interesting thing is how this environment changes individuals. All the guys, who managed those companies, were smart and creative, but the border between acceptable and criminal actions just stopped to exist for them at certain point of time. Which makes me believe that at some level of career development people always have to do trade offs- their soul for the power. Which basically sets boundaries for my career progress (not that I am that smart though)... Today, former Enron CEO is sentenced to 24 years of prison
- what a miserable end of universal ambitions...
But my hero of the day is definitely Aleksey Vayner, the guy who made movie "Legally blond" look like a poor parody. And he was rewarded for the creativity - he is everywhere in the web, The New York times and Forbes are writing articles on him; even Fox included him into news of the day.

What did he do? Just applied for a job at UBS. What's so special about it? The way he did it. He is finishing his undergraduate studies in History!!! at the Yale university and he has eternal ambition to become investment banker. So he sent to UBS 11 pages resume together with the clip on himself, called "Impossible is nothing". In the clip he does power lifting, plays tennis, dances with a beautiful girl and by the way he already wrote a book, founded charitable organization and investment fund.
Please, see the video - it's worth seeing. Basically, he does everything that is expected from an achiever, everything which is valued by investment banks and management consultancies - he just takes it to extreme a bit. And what is the result? He is the common joke for many people. Again society punishes him for the things it encourages...
Ouch, today it's too philosophical - you must be tired of me by now

I wish cloning was an option

2006-10-10T23:00:00.000+01:00

The time passes by so fast that I can't keep up with it. Finally it happened - now we have so many different classes and home works, I almost don't sleep at night. Sometimes, I feel like Hermione from books about Harry Potter (it's funny I first wrote Porter instead of Potter, though I'm much more attracted by the fairy tales, then by the Porter's five forces). There are some major differences from the book though. I'm not that smart and I don't have the Time turner, but some subjects seem as difficult as Devination to me. (You see I'm a big fan of Joanne Rowling).

This week end I was in Moscow, visiting my friends and family and it was great. It's funny that very often you understand how much you need somebody, only when you are far from each other. But anyway, it's so nice to feel loved and looked after, when you don't have to make important decisions every second and can just be yourself. Actually, this trip made me to understand that I miss myself a lot. Where is the funny girl, always ready for new adventures? And what is this pale, fidgeting and constantly embarrassed creature doing here? Have no idea.

Last week, I told you I don't know where I want to work, so I decided that I need to find out a little bit more about every industry and then try to concentrate on something. As a result, I signed up practically for every club that exists at school (apart from rugby maybe). And this week all those clubs have meetings - so my schedule is pretty full. I think that the clubs are one of the best things at school and really appreciate the opportunity to be involved in so many industries at the same time. I even signed up for the "wine and cheese" club, though I don't think it would be a wise choice for the career. Most of the clubs are very active and professional - they organize educational classes, CV coaching, meetings with prominent people in the industry and so on. This week we have consulting, finance (I signed up for optional valuation course), marketing (it was today and I'm very excited), media and retail. So I will probably post the report by the end of the week.
Today we had yet another very interesting event, organized by the "Women in business" club. It was called "Life after LBS" (yes, there's life after!!) and they invited some very successful women to share their ideas about careers and family with us. I was especially inspired by one lady, who started her own coffee shop, while studying at the LBS and then eventually this coffee shop was transformed into very progressive and successful business. The reason why she started it was pure curiosity and she succeeded! Which actually made me think that I need to sign up for entrepreneurship club as well....

And now I'm forced to leave you, because I have a very important meeting with my book of managerial economics …

How to get a perfect CV

2006-10-04T23:59:00.000+01:00

I can tell you from my experience that to write a good CV is almost as difficult as to write a good novel. And basically you have the same goal: to catch attention of your reader, but you need to fit your wonderful story into one page. And the more experience you have the more difficult it is to exclude some of your achievements from the resume; you always think that each of them is equally important.
In my life I had to rework my resume many times – I’m very curious so I tried different things in my life and for some years was in permanent job search. I spent many hours, reading job postings and tailoring my CV and my efforts were normally rewarded – at least I was always invited for the interview.
So here are my pieces of advice:

Don’t think about what you want to put in – think about what employer wants to see there. Different jobs require different skills and you need to rework you resume, depending on position. It doesn’t mean you need to invent tasks you accomplished to suit the job announcement. It’s very risky – most probably you’ll be asked about those tasks and you will need to be plausible and consistent, so unless you’re not a good actor – it will be hard for you. So, basically you need to rephrase the same accomplishments in different words. For example, our career coach told me that consulting implies analytical abilities, strategic thinking, problem solving, teamwork, whereas investment banking will require usage of mathematical modeling, knowledge of finance and long hours. And those things should be visible in your resume via your achievements.

Be unique. Yesterday, at the finance club, I met very interesting girl – she did undergraduate in poetry and ended up with internship in one of the major investment banks. How did she manage it? The point is that she understood unique advantage that differentiated her from the other applicants with background in finance. Bank was looking a person to work with emerging markets and she has been working in Russia for some time and speaks Russian very well. So she wrote her CV in a way her experience in Russia was dominant. And they invited her for an interview. Of cause then she had to prove that she has all these quantitative abilities and stamina, needed for investment banking, but employer opened the door for her. And sometimes the first step is the most difficult one. Reviewing 10s of 100s of CV employer looks for key words and you need to be sure you understand what those key words are.
Be precise and concise. OK, I love those words, but I put them here not only because of that. CV is not a novel, you want your potential employer to be impressed by it, but you don’t want him to be bored. So, you need to speak about projects you fulfilled, savings you achieved etc, but you must avoid generic phrases that probably look very impressive and stylish to you, but are completely useless. Our career coaches told us, that when writing our resumes we need to speak in terms of accomplishments and not in terms of responsibilities. This is quote true for me. OK - this was about being precise. And now let’s talk about being concise. As I said before your accomplishments need to grab attention of the reader, but there’s no need to tell the whole story in the resume. Leave something to be asked during the interview. You just need to outline each point, you can always give more detailed report when you’re asked.
Be human. I think every employer (though I have some doubts about investment bankers) want to see real people and not bio-robots working for them. That’s why it’s extremely important to put personal touch into your resume. It must contain a part which will show your hobbies and interests. And though people in business school tend to put in such exotic hobbies as taming snakes and saving tourists in mounting, I think anything you are passionate about will be very good.

Oomph, it’s late and I’m flying home for the week-end tomorrow, so I need to go to bed.

The choices we make

2006-10-03T23:41:00.000+01:00

Angie has already written a bit about the core courses that have finally started. We are in the different groups, so I had Accounting and Finance. Those classes are less exciting and controversial than business ethics, but I liked professors a lot. I studied finance before and so far it’s quite straight forward, we’ll see what will happen later…
I had CV coaching in the morning, which defined topic of my post today. Career choices we need to make. You can say that we’re in the very beginning and it’s probably too early to make any choices, but the official job hunt (which is called milk round here) will begin in January and we’re strongly recommended to start networking now. Tremendous number of opportunities in the London Business School (which is good of cause) is driving me crazy – I want to try everything, at the same time I understand that in this case I may end up with nothing (I wish cloning was an option…). So, now I’m doing my own social research – today I was asking everybody, if they know what they want to do for the summer internship, to my great surprise I’m not the only one who is completely lost. As far as my friends are trying to escape when they see me – for some strange reasons they do not want to listen to my dilemma for 1000–th time and I’ m quite tired of discussing this with myself, I decided that you might be so kind to listen to me..
Here are my options:
Strategy consulting. One of the most popular options here and the one which I was thinking to pursue, when I was writing my application to the school. There are a lot of opportunities here with large and boutique consultancies and though I don’t have prior experience in the area, CV coach encouraged me to apply.
Investment banking. The only thing I was sure of, when I was applying to the school was that I don’t want to do IB and now I see that everybody wants to do it and I started to think: “Maybe it’s not a bad idea after all”. The problem is I don’t know anything about it – so now I’m a member of finance, IB and private equity clubs and half of the books on finance moved to my place from the library (so far I managed just to look them through, but I’m planning to read them all J). Again I don’t have experience in the area, but math was one of my majors at the university and CV coach told me I have a chance. Life style (which is basically no life, just work) is not very attractive to me, but compensation is very tempting. I wonder will we study this type of trade offs in the ethics class?
Industry. That’s the area where I have much experience and where I can succeed (otherwise they will not admit me to the school I suppose). By the way – industry is everything that is not included to IB and consulting – very wide area as you see. According to the school’s statistics, increasing number of people chooses industry for their summer internship. And for me opportunities in marketing, internal consulting and energy are very attractive. Guess what I’m a member of marketing and industry clubs as well.
Apart from this I have a well hidden dream to work either in media or in charitable organization, which is harder to find, but is definitely possible.
Now, do you see my dilemma? I’ll be happy to hear advise from you in this regard.
And finally, I wanted to make this blog as useful for you as it’s for me, so tomorrow I’ll post some CV writing tips from our career services

Some Dos and Don'ts in application process

2006-10-01T23:24:00.000+01:00

My friend from Russia, who was admitted to several schools and now is struggling with the choice came to visit me for this week-end, which reminded me that not a long time ago I was in the same situation. So I decided to tell you about the things I have done wrong.
Do not overemphasize the GMAT score. I remember myself dreading the day, I needed to take GMAT. I read tons of posts in different forums, discussed GMAT with my friends, with agency helping to prepare for the exam, I knew average GMAT score for different schools by heart. Then I passed the exam, received pretty decent score and became even more unsure about it – should I retake it or not? Summing up, I lost a lot of time on improving my GMAT score, when in reality it’s just one part of the application package. Now, I know a lot of people, who got into top 10 schools with the score, which is not very high by any means. So, don’t be obsessed with the GMAT – you just need to have good balance between verbal and quant part and the score, which is around average for the school. 760 or higher score from the other side doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get in. Which of cause doesn't mean you need not to prepare :))

Spend more time on essays. Now I see that essays are really the only thing that differentiates you from the crowd. Admissions committee reads endless number of applications and yours should be special. When I was applying, I had a lot of things to do at my work and quality of my applications was really worsened by that. So, I’m bagging you – find some time, think, structure, write and rewrite- it’s really important. The other thing that is worth to consider (and which came to my mind only when the whole process was over), is that your essays will also be used for granting you scholarships. There are certain scholarships in every school which are given solemnly based on your application package. Do you want somebody to pay for your very expensive education? Think well when you’re writing essays.

Speak early to recommenders. Selection process for recommenders is the whole separate story, but do start to think early. Usually, those are people, who have higher position in the company then you have, so you can’t just send them an e-mail with instructions and set the dead-line. You need to give them some time to read the questions, you need to give them some time to understand that the fact that you are on very friendly terms with their dog, can’t be used as the main topic of the recommendation. You need to be polite but persistent and regularly remind them about “those questions we discussed before”, you need to supply them with new copies of the question list because they will definitely loose several of them, hoping to escape this terrible task. I had quite a tough time with recommenders – one of them lives in the other country, but he was very disciplined and tried to do everything on time (not very successfully though). But the real problem I had with my direct boss, I spent 2 months in inventing different ways to say the same thing and was pretty desperate at the end. So, start early.

Do not apply at the very last moment. That what has happened to me – I’m not very organized person and my application process reflects that to the full extent. Can you imagine, that I applied exactly 1 hour before the deadline to one of the Universities (where somehow I was admitted). I finished my application at 5 a.m., moreover when I was uploading my last essay, I found out that I didn’t understand the question properly and my answer was completely irrelevant. So, I had to re-write the whole thing in 50 minutes …. Electronic systems of application encourage very comfortable illusion, that you have plenty of time and what you need to do is one click. Please, please, don’t think so and don’t leave everything till the very last hour, especially if it’s the school of your dreams.

Do select schools you’re applying to carefully. I didn’t apply to many schools (only 4), but the schools were very different and I really didn’t analyze much what my priorities in terms of this list were. You never think you will be admitted to all of them. And then you suffer from terrible torments of choice. Not only you, but your friends, your relatives, your colleagues and even your cat doesn’t want to listen to you anymore. I have been through this and now I see how my friend is suffering from the same tortures. So, please, spend some time on prioritizing your choices and please don’t be very emotional in your reasons (girls I’m talking to you now). By the way, I just found out, that the most growing category of MBA applicants in Russia, are young girls – so this comment should be especially relevant.

When you’re admitted do not work till the very last day. That’s what I did. I stopped to work one week before the classes started and now I feel like I don’t have any strength left at all. I feel very sleepy half of the day and my mates from the study group fear that I’m starting to hibernate. They seriously think this is connected to the Russian winter and expect to see me in spring.
Of cause I had the reason for working for so long. Unfortunately, I am very good at spending money and very bad at retaining them. So, when I figured out all my potential expenses (which in reality was only 2/3 of them), I understood that it would be nice to work for 24 hours a day for the last months (though I didn’t manage to persuade my boss I can really do this). This leads us straight to the next point.

Save money. Or at least know your expenses in advance. There is no way you’ll be able to spend only 10 quid per day in London, you will spend more, so, please don’t hide from the problem – you need to make realistic evaluation of total costs as early as possible. That’s what I didn’t do, so now, when I want to go to the theater, I need to calculate for how many days I will not be able to eat.

Do apply for scholarships. Even if you work till the very last moment and don’t have much spare time, find some. For 2 reasons: there’s a probably you’ll get the scholarship and even if you don’t have one it’s useful experience.

Don’t think that loan application is easy. I always thought that the main task is to be admitted and then everything would go nice and smoothly. I was wrong… I spent a lot of time preparing documents for the loan, then translating them, then having endless e-mail exchange with the bank, explaining them what are those documents, after which I had to begin all over again. 2 times. So be prepared to spend much time and efforts on loan application (especially if you’re from Eastern Europe).

There are probably some more dos and don’ts but I’m tired and I’m afraid that you’re pretty bored already – so good night.

Night on the bold mountain

2006-09-27T23:52:00.000+01:00

What do you think happens when 60 girls meet altogether in the small bar in Soho? I was very suspicious of the result, when I was walking to the girls' night out tonight. But mysteriously I had a lot of fun and we even have not discussed boys (well almost). 4 very active and brave ladies decided that we don't see each other often and organized our meeting, which was great, because I met some girls for the first time.
In general there are a lot of things going on in school and if you want to you can go to party every evening. There is one guy in my stream who is determined not to miss a single party on the course - you see people here are very ambitious even about partying (the guy is really nice though). For the beginning I felt quite uneasy about all this socializing – it was hard for me just to go and try to know people (and to tell you the truth it still is). But I decided that I want to feel comfortable in this city and if I do, I need to have some friends and for this I need to at least talk to people. So here I am, bewildered girl in the middle of laughing crowd. How come all these people know each other so well, probably I have been sleeping for the last half of year?! But then now I am definitely awake and there are no princes around to save me, so I’ll have to take care about everything myself. Planned a lot of social events for the rest of the week – will have something to tell you about.

Finally first yellow leaves

2006-09-26T00:30:00.000+01:00

Hi, stranger. It's nice that you've found some time and decided to read my blog. I'm just starting (both my MBA and my blog) and hope that my thoughts will be either useful or entertaining for you - or even both. I'm first year MBA student of the London Business School, I came from a very big and very cold country and so far was enjoying nice weather, till I've seen first yellow leaves today - the autumn finally caught me.
I decided to start with the things that amazed me most in London.
1) How small and expensive the apartments are. I came one week before the start of the program, because I couldn't leave my job earlier and started to look for an apartment. My experience shows that 2 days can be enough to find the flat, but you need to be flexible in your requirements. And you need to be ready to share your apartment with somebody. Otherwise you'll find yourself in the tiniest studio, where you will need to push your bed outside of the apartment in order to use ironing-board (which has happened to me once). When first time I went to see the apartment with the agent - he proudly showed me small shabby flat, the same size as my wardrobe in Moscow, with a great view on train station and the price was unbelievable. But the flat was just across the school, which didn't help because the house represents a maze and I lost my way on my first attempt to leave the flat on my own. So, I decided that I can’t ask a porter to accompany me each time I'm going in or out and didn't rent the flat. Which was good, because if you're ready to walk for 15 minutes (which in normal life people don't mind, but here everybody is obsessed with the idea of living near the school. I think price of education makes people really understand the expression "value of the time"), you can find something bigger and cheaper.
2) How changeable the weather is in the UK. You know, in my country, when it's cold people wear boots, when it's hot people wear flip flops. Here, in 5 minutes, I met a girl in boots and a girl in flip flops, which is of cause partially explained by English weather. It changes 10 times a day and I think at some point all UK citizens understood that they can't make weather forecast for more then an hour and decided to disregard the weather at all. So, they just wear what they want - you're in the autumn mood today - fine, wear a coat; and your boyfriend feels like it's summer - OK, let him wear shorts. You can be sure that at least for half an hour each season will take place during the same day.
3) How different the people are in the UK. I don't like to be alone in the apartment during the dark time of the day, so in order not to be scared I turn on TV, and normally with this type of behavior you're forced to listen to some news from time to time. In Russia news usually start with major war conflicts or economic changes or political events - pretty boring stuff. But here nobody cares about elections of the prime-minister if Jude Law has cheated on Sienna Miller - this becomes the main news and the whole nation debates whether they should support poor Sienna (women) or defend Jude (men). Completely unknown people go to reality shows, such as "Big brother", perform highly intellectual tasks such as to stand on one leg during the day and in 3 months they become stars. They hit 1 mln pounds deals for their life stories, which mysteriously are of interest to many people, who had no idea about these stars' existence 4 months ago, but now feel deeply attached to them. There's a common prejudice, that British people are dry and boring - you see it's a big mistake.