Fast Times @ Rotman High

I am working on this theory (and I may refer back to it from time to time), that MBA school is like High School except we are of legal drinking age and are spending a hell of a lot more money to be here. A great chit lit book that painted this picture is Sarah Mlynowski's* Monkey Business. She writes a fictional story about an entering class of MBA students who are all living in the same on campus residence building and it makes you wonder just how far you have to come to be back in high school.

The first comparison I will make is in terms of the actual environment. All of the classes are in one building, our class of roughly 265 students is segregated into 4 sections, and you stay in the same room all day, while professors come to you. Students are given lockers to store belongings and tend to socialize, eat, study and just hang out at school.

Being in an MBA program means you have a group of people who are very diverse in terms of experience, academic and ethnicity, but have 2 very important things in common.

The first is that they have an interest and have made a commitment to get an MBA. This can mean they have a strong desire to better manage a business and believe that the MBA will give them the tools to do this. Or that they want to increase their ability to generate future cash flows. (ie get paid more money).

The second is that they got into B-School, and at Rotman, more importantly they got into the best school in the country. This means the student body is smart, can demonstrate community involvement and has quality work experience to draw from.

For these reasons students don't exactly break out according to their breakfast club characters (brain, athlete, basket case, princess and criminal) as we might see in the high school setting, but we do break into groups according to career interest. I am told by second year students that as the year goes on, the Management Consulting students all hang out, the Finance students all stick together, the Marketing students team up etc.... We have yet to see this in our class, but the job hunt has yet to begin so we can only wait and see.

As you can see this theory is scattered and will either develop over time or completely disappear. For now, I must sign off to get some readings done.

*Note: (Mlynowski is a fellow McGill Alumni though I have never met her, I do enjoy her novels)