SLOAN...

MIT Sloan: the "other" business school in Boston. Well, first off... the information session was the best I have attended so far - in terms of location (Pacific hotel SFO), food (hot appetizers..mmm), information packages (about 15 handouts), and number of alumni who showed up (about 15-20 people). This was the most well thought of, and well organized sessions... totally made up for my friday night visit to this session.

Sloan session was VERY useful for me: it helped change my mind about the program I would apply in. If you see the title of this blog :LFMcandidate, I was interested in the LFM program at MIT, but after attending the session, I am planning to apply in the regular MIT Sloan program. I personally think that given my interests, Sloan regular MBA would be better suited for me. In case someone who is in the same position as me and has trouble deciding between the programs, please email me offline and we can chat.. I have done my due diligence on these programs.

Well then..that out of the way, Highlights of Sloan and info session:

• Sloan has done away with tracks altogether and have come up with an innovative thing called track-maps, based on experiences of previous classes . So you have no majors, but personalized tracks. Cool...
• 43% international sudents.. WOW... that is the largest % I have seen. Translates into a network of 20,000 alumni and 100,000 MIT alumni.
• There was a funny video made by class of 2004 - on typical day in the life of a Sloanie... very cool!
• IAP: independent activities period (in Jan): no classes, just mini-courses and exercises.
• People: down to earth, humble, and very very smart. I had a guy approach me and started talking to me in a very calm manner - turns out he is an entrepreneur who went to B-school and is now at McKinsey. One thing though - all 15-20 alumni were men.. I dont know why that was.. maybe just coincidence. Also, lot of them were in tech firms - Oracle, Seibel, Cisco, Yahoo, Amazon.. some in startups, not too many finance folks.
• Fellow applicants: This info session took the prize for the lame-est fellow applicants. While I am not going to go into details of the composition, it was obvious that most of them were techies. So they were asking questions like - How do adcoms value community service? or ..I was stuck in my cube the past year, so how do I answer the question- "Anything meaningful in your life the past year"? Comon!! I felt bad for the patient Adcom guy Jon (who btw was very dynamic) answering all these questions.
• Sloan has a behavioural interview.. out of 3000 applciants, 900 are interviewed..about 1/2 are admitted.
• $50k competition - started 3COM, Akamai technologies and host of others... Entreprenurship is big at Kendall square - home of MIT.

About people: I think some comments I had heard of Sloan folks is partially true. I mean, about Sloanies lacking the aggressiveness and leadership qualities. But I think its a bit more involved than that - Sloan produces leaders who are innovative, technologically grounded, but most importantly -humble. They roll up their sleeves at REAL problems - not give high level strategy all the time. This is a very unique feature of the school - and I felt at ease among such people.