Tulane University Freeman School BLOG

#3: Size Matters.

Wharton has 850 MBA’s. Harvard has 500+, Vanderbilt almost 400. Tulane…110.
As personal as you want to make it, you can do it at Freeman. Keep reading →

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HOORAY!!!! Another student friend decides to blog about her summer! Thanks, Rebecca!
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Will was looking for some other first year MBAs to give updates about their summer internships so despite having never “blogged” (is that the correct term?) before, I decided to oblige.

I’m in Houston this summer working for a consulting firm’’s human capital management practice. We work with companies to help them measure people as strategic investments and not just expenses. For most hard-core business school students this might sound like a foreign concept, but believe me it’s a big business! For me it was a perfect fit with my previous experience and interests so I’m glad I found the opportunity (which by the way was through the CMC & is with a Tulane Alum).

My first week here I met up for happy hour with 4 other first year (soon to be second year!) Tulane MBAs and it was interesting to compare notes on internships.

The first thing that struck me is the differences in those in formal internship programs with specific expectations and job duties compared with others who seem to be making their own opportunity. My internship falls somewhere in the middle. My team typically has a summer intern, but just one. However, in the past they haven’t hired MBA interns so they aren’’t quite sure yet what they can expect from me. So far that’’s worked to my advantage. Last week I put together an answer to an RFI (request for information) from a Louisiana company and my boss thought I did a great job. She’’d sent me some previous examples but we hadn’’t had the time to discuss the project in great detail. I think she appreciated that I took the initiative to get something on paper for her to review since she’’s swamped at the moment and was relieved to see how close it was to a finished product.

As much as I complained at times about the team assignments in school, I must say I’’ve learned how to operate on a team more effectively and it’s been useful for this internship. I’’ve noticed my team here works collaboratively on a lot of projects so balancing that with the immediacy of the deadline is an important skill to learn.

Next week I’’m traveling to Las Vegas for our practice group’’s off-site meeting so I’m excited to meet everyone from our other offices and see Vegas for the first time! More on that later…

Rebecca

Thanks, Rebecca!

-will

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The second week of work went like this. Katerina and I finished off the bonus redesign program. Playing with people’s pay made me nervous. We spent a lot of extra time on that one. To be fair we tested several of them with performance data to make sure they’d come out within an acceptable range. The idea is to make people happy, and they definitely will be.

We did some data manipulation to build new charts for reporting the success of the residential side of the business. We polished that off today. Next we’re working with the CFO to update the spreadsheets used for profitability analysis of new contracts.

We’re getting access to really cool learning opportunities.

Will

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4. New Orleans Is A Great Place to Get An MBA

But before I jump into how great NOLA is, I received an update from Edmund Hughes who runs the Career Management Center at the Freeman School. He mentioned that Tulane does provide email for life (you@tulanealumni.net), which is nice, but it would be much nicer if we were allowed to keep our existing @tulane.edu addresses, like Tuck, Harvard, UMich, etc. Tulane’s solution is good enough for the majority of its graduates, but not sufficient for the MBA’s. It really isn’t that hard to (warning: geek speak ahead) take an Active Directory account and replace the Exchange account with an SMTP forward. Keep pushing, Edmund. I want my @alum.freeman.edu account! Ok enough of that.

One of the reasons I started this blog was because my impression of New Orleans post Katrina was awful. I had a buddy who worked for a newspaper. One of this favorite quotes was, “If it bleeds it leads.” No one makes money on good news, so it wasn’t surprising that the major media outlets continually find ways to make New Orleans look like a backwater that it really isn’t. So I set out to change people’s impressions, and now over 5000 of you visit every month to get the real scoop. Take that, Rupert Murdoch. Keep reading →

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Hey Everyone,

Several people asked to hear from an international student about what the job search is like. I sent some emails around and got Max Correa, a real star student, from Chile to respond to your concerns. Welcome, Max!

Max writes:

Every international student knows that it is harder to get employed in the US, to be honest for the longest time I blamed the H1B visa problem for a lot of things. At first I was concerned/angry/disappointed and many other words I don’t even know how to spell. Many companies coming to campus would simply refuse to look at international student’s resumes.

Fortunately we have the CMC, they offer a wide variety of tools to get employment and unlike many of my classmates, I felt the urge to use them early on.

Yes sure it would be really nice to sit at school and wait for companies to draft me, but the truth is that happens but not too often, especially not to international students. Fortunately resources to get a job are there for us to use, and with a class size of roughly 70 there are widely available. Keep reading →

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Reginald (The GBC president) and myself are meeting with the Dean on June 20th. We will push extensively for a new website with better-than-market tools for students, prospectives and recruiters, in addition to a redesign.

Please post here in the comments any suggestions you may have. We have a flurry of affordable ideas (after all, this is business school), but if you have something for us, let me know!

Will

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Katerina and I started a bit later than the rest of the students, but this past week was our first week at our internship. We’re both working in the same area, and, in fact, the same office most of the time. We’re doing several projects jointly, which is great, because we can check each other’s work and tackle projects more accurately.

The biggest surprise for me was the extent to which we use Russ Robbin’s statistics skills. This is the first class you’ll stress about in the business school. If you pass though, you’ll attain a yellow-belt in excel. There is a refresher during the summer and I’d take it if I were you. The very first day on the job, we were doing “nested-if-statements” in excel. If you don’t know what that is, I’ll just tell you it’s a pain in the ass. It was far less of a pain in the ass, though, thanks to Russ Robbins and the MBA.

Furthermore, if you’re worried about your MBA being worth something, this is what I have to say about that: our task for first week was to redesign the bonus compensation for the entire New Orleans business unit (50+ people). Next week we’ve been charged with analyzing the pro-forma structure that they use for new business deals. Granted we’re excel jockeys, but we’re certainly not gophers either.

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5. Finding information at the Freeman School is up to you.

Our facilities are great. We’ve got some of the most wired classrooms in the nation, our trading room is second to none and the business school building itself is basically brand new. This is great, AFTER you’ve made the decision to come to Tulane. But what about prospective students? How do you find information about the school? And afterwards, when you’re a student here, how do you find book lists, a schedule of classes, or your teacher’s bio? The answer is you don’t. Keep reading →

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Email from a student! Hooray!

Hi Will

 

I am a Freeman admit, 2008-2010.

I have been following the blog keenly.

 

I have marked Freeman on a google map. Can you let me know if I am correct.

I will use the info to look for housing.

Keep reading →

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6. To get the most out of the MBA, you’ve got to PARTICIPATE.

And I don’t mean simply showing up to class. There are so many opportunities to add value to your MBA, inside and outside the classroom.

Inside the classroom:
Put away your facebook/IM/Scrabulous/etc and pay attention! You’re paying almost $200 per class to sit there and you waste your time reading someone’s wall?!?! Keep reading →

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