Chicago Chicago

So I finally arrived in Chicago on Thursday night. The stars seemed to have shone on this trip from the very beginning. JB managed to fly with me finally and the flight was smooth and actually landed earlier than the arrival time, which is almost unheard of. On the way to my sweet friend KJ's home ( BTW BIG shoutout to KJ for making my stay absolutely scrumptious!!), I got hit upon on the streets around 5 times!! That's never happened in one evening in NY and I had "flight clothes" on!

Nehooo, I have been running on 4 hours of sleep a night since. Friday was GSB live. Here goes another shoutout. BIG PROPS to the GSB AdCom and the Dean's student cochairs who organized this event. It was by far the most well organized event I have attended in this whole cycle and it has left me very very deeply impressed with Chicago GSB. It has managed to sway my choice towards the GSB almost 90% as my fav schol. I still haven't visitied Kellogg and this might change on Monday, but I doubt it. And this despite of the fact that Kellogg is the far better brand name for me, considering that I want to go into marketing!

So the GSB live started at 9AM with a breakfast and mingler. As soon as I came in, I was handed a packet by the adcom which detailed my day's schedule, the details of all the activities involved including the lecture I had been assigned and the members of the student panel. The breakfast spead was awesome and the FY students who spoke to us very informative and helpful. The only thing that surprised me and that I was a little put off by through the whole day was that I seemed to know more about the school and its different programs and quirks if you may, than some of the FYs. For example, I knew a lot about the IMBA and the requirements for it, whereas some of the FYs didn't seem to have heard of it almost!

After the obligatory welcome and Q&A with Adcom director, we were herded into a student panel. Once again the discussion was a bit moot for me since I knew most of the answers to the Qs from the crowd. Well YAY me for really knowing the school.

One point worth mentioning from the panel. Someone from the crowd asked "what would you change about CGSB if you could" to the students. Not one of the 5 panelists seemed to have an answer. They all replied to variations of " I would try to time manage my activities more" but really that's not a bad thing in a school, having too many options!! and its not even something 'wrong' with the school. This means either that all the students are remarkably well adjusted to the school and love it, or that they were giving a particularly weak answer to a "weakness" question.

This session was followed by a building tour and by a boxed ( fantabulous) lunch. A point of note through the whole day was, all the applicants ( and there were about 70-80 of us attending), seemed soooooooppppppeerrr friendly. I was surprised. On my previous school visits, you could almost cut the tension in the air and everyone seemed ultra competitive and nasty! The friendliness made for a very relaxing and fun environment thru the day.

Lunch was followed by a lecture and I particularly enjoyed the class I sat for. Without going into too many details, it showed me a very different side of teaching and was by far the most unusual class I have seen.

The final and most IMPORTANT organized session was the application overview. This is the most amazingly brilliant idea thought up the ad com ever...I mean EVER. They handed us applicants, an anonimized application, compete with resume, recommendations etc of a prospective and asked us to judge the candidate ourselves and make notes of his strengths and weaknesses. After giving us half an hour for processing the app, the adcom led us in a discussion of what were the strengths and weaknesses and what could be better. This is such a startlingly informative sessions, since it tells you not only the adcoms very unbiased and strong POV, but it also gives you an honest insight into your own app and gives you a chance to compare yourself to a standard applicant. It basically almost seems to answer that inane questions that you always have.. Am I dong something completely wrong? Short of hiring a very costly admissions consultant, I think this could have been the best method of being able to objectively self analyze your app.

So a Q&A session resumed after this with snacks and once I got bored of hearing the same questions asked and answered again and again, I made my quick exit.

All in all I think it was an amazing experience and I have to say the Chicago GSB proved that they deserve the reputation of being the best adcom and they are very fit to what is arguably the best B school.