A blog of anonymous Baylor MBA students writing about their experiences while in graduate school.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Top US MBA Schools


Today, Amazon launched a new service called UnSpun. UnSpun is a community based system allowing users to rank anything from music, to who they believe is the most influential person of the 20th century.

The community created a ranking of the Top US MBA Schools. Baylor is currently ranked #36. This puts Baylor University's Hankamer School of Business — MBA program above USC and Texas, and just trailing #34 UCLA's Anderson School of Management.

For those of you who know personally how strong the Baylor MBA program is, go to UnSpun now to vote for the Baylor MBA program.


Sunday, May 14, 2006

Semester Review

Some past semester MBA events/news:

To keep current, MBA news and events can be found at the Baylor Graduate Business School web site.


Sunday, December 11, 2005

MBA, a Positive NPV?

A question that many people have been talking and writing about lately is whether or not an MBA provides a positive net present value for the person. Well, I'll answer that question right up front. It depends.

Why such a vague answer you ask yourself? Because there truly is no single answer to this question. It depends upon: your age, the industry you want to go into, whether or not you plan to start your own business, how much you were earning prior to graduate school (and project to earn after graduate school), the opportunity cost of lost promotions that you could have attained while not in graduate school, are you even paying for graduate school, and the list goes on-and-on...

I could go through a simple example calculation of the financial benefit (or loss) for graduate business school; however, it would be exactly that - a simple calculation. As detailed above, many variables exist in the decision process. One can only hope that you weigh the benefits vs. the costs for graduate business school prior to applying and taking on such an endeavor as a MBA program. Certainly, as with many graduate programs, a person will only get out of the program what they put in. If you are not truly committed to graduate business school, ask yourself whether or not it is what you actually want in life.


Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Business & Investing Books

With the holidays just around the corner giving each of us hopefully some free time for reading, I thought I would post Amazon's current most popular Business & Investing books.
  1. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
    by Thomas L. Friedman
  2. Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
    by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
  3. Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
    by Malcolm Gladwell
  4. Empire of Debt : The Rise Of An Epic Financial Crisis
    by Bill Bonner, Addison Wiggin
  5. Jim Cramer's Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World
    by James J. Cramer
  6. The Little Book That Beats the Market
    by Joel Greenblatt, Andrew Tobias
  7. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
    by Malcolm Gladwell
  8. Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great
    by Jim Collins
  9. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
    by Jim Collins
  10. Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money--That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
    by Robert T. Kiyosaki, Sharon L. Lechter
It is my understanding that MGT 5325 (International Management) requires everyone to read The World is Flat, the current best seller in the Business & Investing category. And even though it is not directly listed on Amazon's best seller list, Strategy requires everyone to read Jim Collin's Good to Great book.

Amazon's entire Business & Invest best seller list


Saturday, December 03, 2005

Guerilla Marketing Gone Bad?

Numerous reports are coming out about what appears to be a coordinated marketing campaign effort by Sony to advertise, through the use of graffiti, its PlayStation Portable (PSP) device. LA, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco have been found to have similar looking graffiti depicting people using the PSP device. Residents are outraged by such destruction of public and private property. Sony is denying all claims to their involvement in these acts of vandalism.

This is an interesting illustration of what potentially could be a corporation finding new channels of marketing to consumers.

Read more about this story.


Friday, December 02, 2005

Finals Week Ahead

Final exams for the semester starts next week. For those unfortunately 3rd and final semester students, exams started this past Thursday. Finals are always an interesting time of year since students stress a little more than normal. Students sleep a little less than normal, and happy hour is considerably less eventful since many of us will not be attending. But for some of us, we don't care. We plan exams as just another event on our calendar of things to do. It's a difficult task to describe to someone just how busy we are. Starting our day early and not finishing until the late hours of the night. Some of us had a disillusioned idea that coming back to school after working would actually somehow be less busy, and stressful than the life that we once lived before. And you know what, it's not. We do twice the amount of work, are more stressed, and don't even receive a paycheck at the end of the month.

Well, it's Friday and I am exhausted. Time to have some fun and maybe even play some golf.