In retrospect....

In retrospect...

I present for no other reason than I feel like it, the top 10 mistakes I wish I hadn't made, or things I learned or whatever I can come up with that happens to end up with 10 items ... in no particular order:

#1: Grades
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I may have graduated with a ridiculously high GPA, but in retrospect it had no bearing on anything (not least of which my job hunt due to the fact that we have GND anyway). Now two years out, it seems clear no one would care if I had a 3.9 GPA or a 2.9 GPA. And a 2.9 would have been a LOT easier to get. I do dream of one day teaching and perhaps that 3.9 will be more meaningful then, but for now, its about as interesting as paint drying.

#2: Hanging out more
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Perhaps relating to #1, I wish I had spent more time hanging out and less time worrying. Worrying about grades, jobs, interviews, cover letters, resumes, etc. That's of course easy to say on the other side of the moat, but it seems clear to me now that just about everyone gets something pretty decent coming out of an MBA program. To be fair, there is correlation between effort and outcome but seems to be a lot weaker than I had originally thought.
The next time someone says "lets go drink" and you are about to say no, just say yes. Whatever you were going to do isn't actually important.

#3: Don't get distracted
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It's so easy to get distracted by other job paths. Everyone thinks they know what the best jobs are. IM? Make $300K a year and work 40 hours a week! Banking? Become a millionaire? Consulting? Two years and you can be SVP at Google! Marketing? You'll never make money! Listen to enough of it and you can only come to the conclusion that every industry and every job sucks. Come in knowing what you want, pursue it and leave with it. I can't tell you how many people (myself included) got sucked into interviews we had no business going to.

#4: Rank only sorta matters
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In my case it didn't factor: Chicago was the obvious choice for a number of personal reasons outside of its rank, but I've seen a lot of people pick school X or Y based on rank (and turn down full ride offers at other top schools), and I've come to the conclusion it really really means so little now. If the correlation between effort and job outcome is weak, the correlation between rank and job outcome seems even more pathetic. There's a limit to this of course - but by and large, its surprising (and perhaps a little sad even) how incredibly homogenous - if not outright identical - the programs at the top are. The guy sitting to your left? Harvard. The guy to your right? Sloan. The girl in the other interview room? Ross. Rank will buy you an interview, it won't buy you a job. And once you have the job, it wont buy you anything.

#5: Take good professors not good classes
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Personal experience here but a good professor a good class makes. Simple.

#6: People suck, figure out who doesn't
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Not everyone in grad school is smart. A lot of people are downright stupid. Others are lazy. Some are just tricky little pricks who try to pull fast ones by not doing any work. Figuring out who those people are and keeping them off your study group is a worthwhile endeavor. Similarly, make a name for yourself as someone who can "knock it out the park" and you'll have your pick of the litter. It's easier to kick butt with 4 other people who kick butt than with 4 deadweights.

#7: Spend more time earlier on figuring out what your goals are
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Related to #3. You don't get much time (read: any) to figure out what you really want to get out of your MBA once you land. It's UHF's drink from the firehose skit all day long for 2 years. If something sounds interesting you have precious little time to decide if its something worth pursuing. This is true about jobs, career paths, student groups, classes, etc. Everything happens on lightning speed. I sometimes wonder if I dismissed a career path that would have been a good choice. I read a book called "More than Money" by mark Albion in my 2nd year and I should have read it my first. If you haven't read it, get it.

#8: Do what you like and the money will follow
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It's surprising how many of my friends pursued jobs that had bigger paychecks and ended up hating them with a vengeance. I was shocked at the number of people I knew trying to leave their jobs one year post MBA. Perhaps I shouldn't have been - a down economy certainly didn't help everyone land a dream gig, but it still surprised. And I'm not just talking about banking - really anything applies here.

Ok so thats 8. You make up the other two.