B-school Clubs -- waste of time???

It feels like your view is to near sighted. In my opinion, the MBA is not for now or to get me into my ideal post-MBA job, it's for the future. 10 years down the road when I'm trying to start a company or looking to get into a new field, my MBA network is what I will fall back on. That is the main reason I am choosing HBS over Kellogg. Kellogg actually has better relationships with most CPG companies (especially in Marketing) than HBS. However, I feel the strength of the HBS network will benefit me the most long-term.

Because of that, I plan to get involved as much as I can. Now, I'm not going to join the Sailing club just to put it on my resume. But I will join the golf, running, and culinary clubs to meet others (both students and partners for my wife) with similar interests. You can only meet so many people via studying. Also, if you restrict your network to your industry/function (i.e. - CPG Marketing Club), then you're really limiting yourself to a small subset of the MBA population. And when it comes time to change the direction of your career or explore other opportunities, your network won't be as helpful as it could be.

And finally, I'm not paying $175k just to learn. It's called an "MBA Experience" for a reason and I want to get the most out of my experience. One of the main reasons I feel I had such success in the application process is that I had a personality and showed passion for life (not just school). MBA programs don't want a class full of people that study, sleeep, study, interview, sleep, study, graduate. There's a reason schools have 50+ clubs and it's not because people are bored during their MBA.

I agree with cpgmba..sure the education is important and I plan to work hard on studying, but I'm also interested in meeting and becoming friends with my classmates. How many times in my life will I have 2 years to spend with a group of very accomplished people with such diverse backgrounds and experiences? So while I plan to get involved with career focused clubs like the Healthcare club, GM club, etc. - as a career switcher these clubs will help me in the near term - I also plan to get involved with more "fun" clubs - both to meet a wider group of people and develop friendships, but also to use the MBA as an opportunity to broaden my experiences.

People say that bschool is for business cards/networks as much as for education.
Just like many of us became friends/foes at this forum, I think getting involved in clubs will allow you to make new friends.

This is a definite, MUST thing to do in bschool IMO.

...after 2 years at Haas, it's kinda fun to revisit this topic. I figured I'll share my experience. This is in no way an ideal way of doing things, and I'm not here to tell you what to do - just telling you what I did and where it got me

Basically, it's exactly the way everyone describes here. If you want to network, you want to socialize. If you want to socialize, you want to attend things. Soft club memberships (beer club, wine club, whatever club) are VERY essential: people get drunk, embarrass themselves and build this "we puked together" connection.

Now, my perspective on this was a bit different I do not drink, I didn't want to network, and didn't care much about socializing. I didn't sign up for all the social stuff. (Well technically I did, but never attended.) As I mentioned here 2 years ago, I came in for a bumper sticker and for knowledge; I got both.

So did it impair my networking? Oh yes, big time. I'm a huge outlier on the "class relationship map", cause I have just a few friends and a few study buddies.

Did it hurt my job search? Not at all. After-MBA job search proved to be completely network-independent, at least for Haas. (By "network" I mean classmates, not employees of the companies you're applying to. Those guys you DO have to court, on those events you DO have to show up.)

Will it hurt my future career? Maybe. As truly noted above, who knows where my classmates are in 10 years, and whether they will hire me if they hardly remember who I am.

Do I regret not getting social at Haas? Yes and no. Yes, because it's just a useful skill to have (being able to communicate nicely), and it's not something easy to get, especially if you're a foreigner and English is not your first. No, because I'm a "ronin" type of guy who wants to achieve everything by himself. I don't expect my buddies to hire me; I expect to move fast enough to hire my buddies I might not get to the very top this way, but that's the kind of game I play. As one of my friends noted (see, I do have some!), "you want to win the game on YOUR terms". Exactly so.

P.S. This post probably paints me as an arrogant egocentric ass that doesn't care about people. Not at all I'm super-friendly and built awesome relationships with everyone I interacted with at Haas. It's just I didn't actively go out and hunt for those contacts, letting them happen in a "natural" way.

Amen!!

Some very interesting posts here. I have a strong view on club participation: I think it's an essential part of student life and I agree with people who say that skills will mostly be acquired at work. But it is also a very personal decision. If you are a poet (aka a guy coming from a very different background than finance or something mathy) then you do want to learn a lot, and B-School will be tough. If on the other hand you're a former IBer, then you can take things easier and relax (unless you want to be at the top of your promotion).

I completely agree with braindancer and Alex, I think they sum it up pretty well. But I do think braindancer underestimates the power of the network - but again, this is just my opinion. Networking benefits are not only getting hired by a friend - that actually happens quite rarely - but stuff like getting introductions to the right people for recruiting, knowing that there is a job available at firm X which you would be perfect for, etc. That can only happen if you actually know people who have access to this kind of information.

To answer to the original poster, if you value your sleeping time, that's fine, nothing wrong with that. But trust me, unless you're completely clueless in terms of math or studying (but then again if you were you wouldn't be in B-School if you were), you'll still have time to do fun stuff. Everybody has to find its own right balance, but being too extreme on one side or another is clearly not ideal.

On a final note, I do think that people who focus too much on studies will risk living with regrets, because ultimately you'll almost never ever have the opportunity again to live the kind of life a b-school student lives: having fun surrounded by really smart people, playing sports, travelling, etc.