Ok, I've got a chance to post some more.
Opening residency was awesome. We went to an amazing hotel on the national waterfront, divided up into teams of 8 and did a live case competition on the wireless industry. At the end we presented in front of consultants and partners from Deloitte as well as professors and second years. We also had time for some fun group stuff like a scavenger hunt and some classes on the basics of a whole range of topics we might need.
Another favorite was the presentation we had from the founder of Pandora Radio. He spoke for about an hour taking us through his career and the story of Pandora, then he answered questions for a while. It was really cool. He had such an interesting life story. Basically he was a working musician for a while, then he got a job helping directors pick music for movies. That experience led him to get a very deep understanding of how music tastes worked which eventually led to the creation of Pandora. He told all about the struggles of finding a model to monitize the product and find VC financing to keep the company running. Interestingly every song on Pandora is rated by hand. Something I never would have thought of.
I think ultimately MSB was a perfect fit for me. Culturally it has a lot of the same qualities as the other small schools but has the benefit of not being out in the country like Cornell, Darden and Tuck. If you like the country then sweet, but the amenities of a major city are also nice. Sometimes, after 75 hours of sitting in the Harari building with the same 500 people for a week it's nice to be able to escape for a day. We're able to do things like go on office visits to McKinsey, Deloitte and the FBI without having to leave the metro system, and you have a wide variety of restaurant and entertainment choices.
There are obviously DC specific benefits as well...Beyond the fact that all the Museums are free and things like that we also benefit from being in the center of everything here. We had a great finance day earlier this year where we had Sheila Blair and Larry Summers and some other big names come in and speak.
I think one of the best things about being at Georgetown right now is that we all have the feeling that the program is on it's way up right now. Everyone loves the school and there's just this amazing positive energy about everything. When we complain about something, it's almost always followed by a suggestion of how to make it better, which is almost always followed by some action. The administration and professors are really open to feedback and adopt it quickly. If you have an idea about how to make something better you can get on people's schedules in the Dean's office or elsewhere and they really listen to what you have to say.
I also just really like my classmates and professors. There's no one in my class that I don't honestly enjoy talking to. Like I said before, you can totally just get beaten down some weeks and be sick of the whole thing, especially in the first mod when the adjustment to being quite so busy hits you, but doing it with people you like makes it all a lot easier.