Just got back from the infosession. Oh boy, rhyme won't like this...
Pros:
- FIFTEEN alums showed up, including the CEO of Maxtor (now Seagate)! That's a record! It gave a GREAT overview of what people did before and after GSB.
- There was real food
Cons:
- While the information was good, this was probably the worst presented infosession I've seen, compared to Stanford, Haas, UCLA, Kellogg, and Stern. The guy presenter was very monotonic and boring, while the lady present said so many "ums" that I wanted to kill someone.
- The "arrogance" of the alums, while not as blatant as some other schools, was definitely on display. There were numerous mentions of Stanford and how GSB is better than Stanford in Entrepreneurship and Venture Capitalism. While the alums keep on saying "I don't want to put down another school," they continued to bring up examples on why GSB is superior. This is the ONLY infosession where anyone ever mentions another school by name and compares against it. Not even Haas said anything bad about Stanford, nor Kellogg anything bad about GSB, and none of the others were remotely as arrogant (yes, even Stanford was pretty humble). I was very turned off by this.
- One alum went all the way to say, "In entrepreneurship, or in any field, if you're not going to the top 5 schools (H/S/W/Ch/K), you really need to rethink why you want an MBA and all the opportunity costs involved." Ouch! What about Haas and UCLA, which both have GREAT entrepeneurship programs and definitely beats GSB in real estate and entertainment/media, respectively?
- They keep on claiming that GSB has THE BEST (not "one of the best", but "the best") entrepreneurship program in the country. Wow! That's a huge claim! Even Stanford didn't say that! This was followed by the claim that "Stanford's well known for entrepreneurship/VC only because of its location." Yikes!
Anyway, the whole event left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm not going to judge the school based on this case alone, but "holistically", GSB has fallen down a few more notches in my "want to apply" meter. I just did not find any of the alums to be very personable, compared to the Kellogg, Haas, Stanford, and UCLA alums. I will still try to visit GSB when I go to Chicago later this year, hopefully that'll change my mind.
sorry rhyme, I really wanted to like GSB, but things that I'm finding out about it are pushing me farther and farther away from applying.
Oh yeah, interesting tidbit, there were more than 50% Indians in the crowd, out of 70-80 students. You guys got competition!