London Business School places first in Forbes ranking

The biennial Forbes survey, compiled in terms of gain on expenses, questioned alumni from the class of 2004 to determine the results and saw London Business School move up from number two in 2007 to re-capture the top spot which it also held in 2005. Alumni were asked for their pre-MBA salaries as well as compensation figures for three of the first five years after getting their degrees. Post-MBA salaries were then compared with opportunity cost (tuition and forgone salary while in school). Salary figures are adjusted to account for cost-of-living expenses and discounted the earnings gains, using a rate tied to money market yields. Sabine Vinck, Associate Dean, Degree Programmes said, "I am delighted that we have re-claimed the number one position in this ranking. This result demonstrates that London Business School offers excellent return on investment and that our alumni compensation levels post-graduation are among the highest in the world. While we do not allow rankings to drive our strategy, it is gratifying nonetheless that the value of a London Business School MBA has been so categorically recognised. I would like to thank all those alumni who took the time to complete this survey." The Forbes ranking consists of three separate tables: US programmes, non-US one-year programmes, and non-US two-year programmes. They do not produce a combined rankings table. Insead was ranked first in the one year programmes outside the US, with Stanford the top US programme. A full breakdown of the rankings can now be found here. The rankings issue of the magazine will be on newsstands from 7 August.
Copyright - London Business School

London Business School Art Exhibition and a white paper on educational reform…..

I've been MIA for a while. Speaking on MIA, if you like her music, check out Santogold. I've been flying under the radar, having spent a fantastic weekend in Boston, organized the London Business School Crossroads Art Exhibition, taken a macroeconomics exams and finished my organizational behavior audit with MyBnk (a non-profit). BTW If you are into pro-bono for non-profits, I highly recommend these articles:

• The new landscape for nonprofits. By: Ryan, William P.. Harvard Business Review, Jan/Feb99, Vol. 77 Issue 1, p127-136
  
• Organizational lessons for nonprofits. By: Hauser, Jerry. McKinsey Quarterly, 2003 Special Edition Issue 4, p60-69

The art exhibition (sponsored by my summer sugar-daddy, Nomura) was well-attended and the open-air concerts (violin, viola, harp, flute) performed by students from the Royal Academy of Music were simply mind-blowing. We had rented a grand piano, and it was great to hear the quad fill with notes from Rachmaninoff, quite different from the usual corporate buzz-buzz. Dean Andrew Likierman inaugurated the exhibition. This was the best two months that I've spent organizing an extracurricular event. My role was Veep of Sponsorship, and Senior Veep of Jack-of-all-Tradery and Event-managery. Incidentally, I'm doing the same role for the London Business School Healthcare Club, in preparation for the 2009 Healthcare Conference. GSK chief, Andrew Witty will deliver the keynote.

So you may wonder if I ever study, given all my travels and extracurricular involvement. The simple answer is "No". And does that mean that there is a mad scramble and all-nighters before exams? The answer is "Yes". The truth is that, this is what works best for me. And no matter what your study style in B-school, it is relatively easy to get an A, curve notwithstanding. And then again, with grade non-disclosure, often people don't care enough. I just don't agree with most of what is being taught in my Operations and Strategy classes anyways – it is outdated and impractical in the real world. As for Macroeconomics – spend 2 days quality time with a good text book, read the Economist and read whatever Goldman Sachs and McKinsey's chief economists put out, and you're golden.

McKinsey Managing Director Ian Davis on "What society expects from business"

The B-school experience, coupled with the Macroeconomics class, and McKinsey chief Ian Davis's talk, and a question I was asked in a consulting interview "What reform is needed in the educational system, globally?" (I had to spin tales for 45 minutes) prompted some deep thought which I intend to convert to a white paper at some point. But here are the salient points (below). I'd love to hear your opinion on it (email me at sbuxespresso@gmail.com)

1) Professional degrees must be shortened in order to return high-GDP producing individuals to the workforce ASAP. Case in point, doctors, lawyers, MBAs and PhDs. The advanced professional degree educational system is outdated and programs are too long. A combination of self-study, online courses and modular/block weeks, with a greater emphasis on internship time is what's required. Think of your own MBA experience. Wouldn't you rather be out making the big bucks, ahem!, increasing GDP earlier. And, especially for PhDs and doctors, with the internet, data-mining, rapid technology upgrades and better predictive/computational/hypothesis defining/problem-solving tools, it should be easier to get done in 3 years, no more. People entering these degrees are arguably smarter and better informed today than their peers 20-30 years ago, and we aren't futzing around with Bunsen burners and conceptual quarks and anti-quarks as in years gone by. Besides, not only is there an opportunity cost associated with keeping people out of the workforce, there is actual value-destruction, as people lose motivation towards the latter stage of their advanced degrees. Ask any fifth year Theoretical Physics PhD or third year medical resident about regressing motivation. And, think of this point and the next one, especially in the light of women, child-bearing years and glass ceilings. Wouldn't this actually make things easier, or at least give them the option? Would it? I'm asking.

2) Ditto for four-year colleges. Split the four years into modular elements so that students can intersperse longer internship spells in between to really understand what they want to do vocationally. Imagine a four year program, where freshman year is when you are 18 and senior year ends when you turn 25! I started off as an engineer, then biotech startup researcher/product developer, only to find that I wanted to be a strategy consultant, and now I'm going into investment banking. And I'm not atypical. More than 75% of my MBA classmates are career changers, onto career number three. How many of us started wanting to study choral music only to find that we really wanted to do few years later was law or underwater basket-weaving? In the meanwhile we futzed around in school or meandered from job-to-job. In other words don't put the horse before the cart.

3) Instead of useless subjects, teach people the following early on in their educational experience

1. How to leverage their brains fully? How to deal with failure? How to find happiness? How to deal with metal pressures? There is a huge body of recent research that suggests that we as humans do not fully understand how and why we think a certain way (nature + nurture). Hence books like 'Stumbling on Happiness' and 'The Paradox of Choice'! After all isn't it about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Our mental and emotional map is still very primitive, and lags behind the pressures and pace of post-post-modern lifestyle. The solutions this new research suggests are not your grandma's Freudian lying-on-your-shrinks-couch bullshit, but solutions grounded real facts based on fool-proof experiments, double-blinds, cross-referenced with MRI/CT scan data. Don't we want everyone to live richer, fuller lives? And bonus - from a capitalistic perspective this understanding helps sell stuff and from a welfare perspective it helps solve problems (Read 'The Tipping Point', 'Freakonomics', 'Supercrunchers', 'Fooled by Randomness' for evidence).
2. How to interact with people, empathize, connect and collaborate. Friction between humans and the inability to snap together like LEGOs and work cohesively are will be the most significant value-destroyers in upcoming years within any organization. See Ian Davis's view on this. How many times do you wish you had insight into a difficult co-worker's mind? Why should good interpersonal skills only be the forte of salespeople and schmoozers? How much does this affect the potential of people who are unable to overcome their social awkwardness? What, are we living in the stone-age, where lousy interpersonal skills impact both individuals and corporate/citizenry well-being? (Read 'Extraordinary Relationships', 'Fierce Conversations').
3. How to find the right mate? Even as it is, one could argue that divorce is a welfare value-destroyer. It is as welcome as a root-canal. And it is definitely an economic value destroyer. Think of alimony or child-support as transfer payments (most feminists and child-advocates would love to scourge me for this). And, not being able to understand what a potential partner would want, defers the mating process (not sex, but confluence), potentially reducing individual happiness (not the happiness associated with a stable partnership, but not being able to fully focus on what makes the individual happy regardless of the relationship). And, ask any joint-tax-return-filing married couple. Less tax equals more savings or consumption which equals more growth of national capital stock which equals more GDP and welfare growth.
4. Teach people how to learn, think and evolve vocationally. This is especially important for developed countries with offshoring and outsourcing. Case in point, Adam Smith vs. theory of comparative advantage. Help people learn to evolve and develop new vocational skills. I have been lucky to have "learned to learn" and to evolve from engineer to researcher to consultant to banker. But this should not be the privilege of a few. Teach the masses to fish…..
5. Teach people to learn to become efficient and drive local Leaness. Everyone on this planet simply needs to learn to live Lean. Lean is not just for making cars, but as the population grows and people in emerging countries learn to consume more, we need to understand how to eliminate waste and conserve resources. Plus, one of the biggest reasons that jobs flow out rapidly from one country to another is loss of productivity. And the reasons why companies like GM go bankrupt is because people aren't thinking daily "How can I make my environment more efficient and less wasteful?" (Read 'Lean Thinking' by Womack and Jones). Also training is passé. Its important for both managers and leaders to be able to coach their reports. (Read 'The Coaching Revolution').
6. Similarly teach people fiscal and personal finance concepts much earlier in life. The reasons are self-evident.
7. Obviously, none of this can be forced down the citizenry's collective throat, given the personal nature of issues at hand, the issue of free will, and given that no government or educational system should be as totalitarian. I suggest a gentler kinder approach where the people are made aware of what they are missing out on and why this is important. Most rational human beings will see the value in this.
   

Well, that's enough pontificating for now. I need to get cracking on my Corporate Markets and Finance final. And then on to reading, 'Damodaran on Valuation' in preparation for my Nomura summer internship. More later!

Excerpt from McKinsey's Ian Davis: Maximizing Shareholder Value Doesn't Cut It Anymore Published : November 01, 2006 in Knowledge@Wharton

……..Fourth on executives' minds is organizational capability. Talent is only one component of capability. "If talent is not trained or relevant to the task at hand," it won't have an impact, he said. Capability comes in many forms: emotional, psychological and intellectual. Sometimes even physical capability is important in business. "Intellectual can be dominant, but often human capability, like the emotional stability to deal with stress, can, in certain circumstances, be crucial."

In most companies, talent is misdirected close to 70% of the time, according to Davis. Often the mismatch between an employee's capabilities and his or her assignment is most obvious from the CEO's vantage point. One CEO told Davis that his main job -- his definition of strategy -- is matching managers' capabilities to the work that needs to be done.

Davis was asked how companies should balance matching individual capabilities with specific tasks, and still be able to develop management talent when new challenges arise that might be beyond an employee's capabilities. He said it is possible to do if top executives have a clear strategic view of what they need and a sense of the people who could ultimately fill senior leadership roles. Then top management should be prepared to invest in those people and tolerate some mistakes.

Business today, he said, is unwilling to accept any degree of failure, even small mistakes that might help future leaders avoid catastrophes in the long run. "We're in a culture that says, 'If you fail, you're gone.'" He argued that most people learn more from their mistakes than their successes. Often CEOs are fired for a mistake, just as they are becoming strong and wise executives. "It's tragic," said Davis. "My general experience is that if you have highly capable, motivated people in the right place, most other problems go away."

The "Usual Suspects"

How do these themes bear on leadership?

Davis said one word captures what is necessary: diplomacy. He defined diplomacy in the business context as "the ability to influence events through the force of personal and moral character.... I think business, NGOs (non-government organizations) and public sector leaders are all going to have to learn the useful skills of diplomacy to explain in a positive way what they do and why they do it."

……..Davis stressed that the issues he focused on in his speech go beyond the "usual suspects" of CEO concerns -- such as costs, corporate structure, customer relationships and strategy. "These subjects matter a lot, but they're starters. You've got to get them right." Even companies that do get the "usual suspects" right don't necessarily thrive, he said. To differentiate themselves in the future, companies will need to build strategies taking into account the larger themes of society and government.

Italian weekend….

Half of my MBA 2010 class visited the Agusta Westland plant near Milan for a school-sponsored field trip. The goal of the visit was to diagnose operational issues in the helicopter assembly and upstream sub-assembly manufacturing plants. Luckily for me, Agusta Westland is 90% similar to a previous client from my consulting days, so this was a lot like shooting fish in a barrel. In any event, as far as operations go, three words are all one needs to know - Lean Six Sigma. Everything else is a load of crap, outdated and ineffective. These days most PE firms swear by Lean Six Sigma.

The helicopter plant itself was near Varese, an hour away from Milan. I won't bore you with the details of how Apache and Sea King helicopters are assembled. However, I'll mention the the pizza in Varese, which was awesome – wood-fired oven, thin crust with parma ham, roquette and buffa mozzarella.

After the plant trip, a few of us rented a car and drove first to Bologna, where we had Bologna salami (baloney) and real Bolognese sauce at Osteria di Poeti, the best restaurant in Bologna (near the city center). We then drove to Florence, where we stayed in Oltrarno for the night.

The next day was spent walking around Florence (remember my admit essay on how I would spend a free day?). Of course no visit to Florence is complete without pistacchio gelato from Ponte Vecchio and a visit to the Gallerie dell'Academia to see David. And, we celebrated April 25, Italy's WWII liberation day, with a bunch of cute communist students at a demonstration below the Piazzale Michaelangelo. They treated us to cantucci, a hard almond biscuit (like biscotti) which is eaten after dipping it in vin santo (sweet wine). And they even gave us a large bottle of fantastic homemade wine, promising to let us make it up to them when they next visited London.

We spent the rest of Saturday and Sunday at a castle in Tuscany - Castello di Ripa d'Orcia, on top of a hill near the village of San Quirico d'Orcia, some 25 km from Sienna. The view from the hilltop and the traditional food from the kitchen was glorious, although the wine from the estate left something to be desired. The serenity of the Tuscan evening was broken only by the sounds of our partying late, and the music from another party in the next castle over, on another hill, a few km away. This morning we drove back to Milan, where after a long delay at Malpensa, we made it back to Gatwick, in time to read our corporate finance cases and finish our managerial accounting homework.

See my blog post on the Monster of Florence

The Duffman cometh

Stealth photography at the Gallerie dell'Academia

The view from our castle

Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise" - Baptistery across from the Duomo in Florence

View of the Duomo from Pizzale Michaelangelo

Our "art" stunt at London Business School

On being nominated for Best of Blogging @ Clear Admit

A much needed update to my blog. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I was nominated for Clear Admit's Best of Blogging. Fantastic! A really busy schedule prevents me from waxing literary, so bullet points will have to suffice. What has life brought my way these days?

• I'm in love with Japan. I almost applied for exchange to Keio but other conflicts prevented me from making it work. I'll likely take a few block weeks during one of the terms at LBS and then spend a month in Japan.
• Leaving for Milan on Thursday for a trip related to my Operations and Technology Management Class. I'm visiting the Agusta Westland Helicopter operations near Milan to do a diagnosis of their assembly plant which should give me an opportunity to apply those Lean Diagnostics skills I used in my previous consulting work. Agusta Westland usually makes the Air Force One helicopters but Obama won't be getting one this year.
• Speaking of Obama, the non-profit I'm consulting for, MyBnk was in the news lately. The Chief paid an impromptu visit to its London office during his G20 visit to meet Lily Lapenna and her crew and to thank them for educating common people on financial principles in these tough economc times. Go Lily!!!
• Event prep for Crossroads, the LBS Art Exhibition, is going great guns. Tomorrow we take over the quad and install an exhibit. It's a clothes line strung across the quad, hung with colorful bras and boxer shorts and equally colorful resumes, rejection letters and candidates' responses to rejection letters.
• I recently visited Saatchi Gallery in London. Their current exhibition "Art from the Middle East" is f@#king awesome, like nothing I've ever seen before.
  
• Several friends from Boston and Sweden visited me in London. That was awesome! Shout out to Keith, Kate and Ariana!
• I love Marketing Strategy – it's the most amazing course I've taken so far, and Dan Goldstein, who teaches it, is the best prof I've had so far.
  
• I highly recommend that every rational young adult read "Stumbling Upon Happiness" by Daniel Gilbert. It's a provocative look at why we as adults may or may not find happiness elusive
• I highly recommend that you watch 50 Dead Men Walking, IRA, moles, great 80's rock, heart-pounding thrills – the movie has it all. It's Brilliant!
  
• I highly recommend that you iTunes download "They Don't Love You" by Juvelen and "Rive" by Electrified Jet Shamisen Okita (Think Kill Bill, fusion traditional Japanese music and rock, except its driven by an electric Shamisen. Awesome!).
  
• And finally, I just got back from a lecture on leadership at LBS by Ian Davis, ex Global Director of McKinsey. He's one of my heroes! Getting a chance to shake his hand and speak with him one-on-one was just incredible.
  

More soon. Sayonara!

Why I'm in love with Japan. Cherry Blossoms in Tokyo Midtown.

Cherry Blossoms in Kyoto

Toyota City, Nagoya

Making a mockery of the tea ceremony. Not sure that one dunks the green tea biscuit in the green tea, but what do I know, I'm gaijin!

The fair ladies of London Business School

And you thought the London Tube/Paris Metro was hard to navigate? Try Tokyo

I’m dying for a good movie about junkies in Edinburgh….

Ugh! I've said it before here but I'll say it again, "Danny Boyle, you should stick to making movies about junkies in Edinburgh! Look mofo, your exploiting India's poverty for titillation to accompany popcorn chomping is not cool. Your connection with India is zilch! In fact the first time you visited the country was to shoot the film. And, did you even watch City of Joy and Cidade de Deus before decided to go slumming?"

I quote from the Financial Times February 23 2009: The film (Slumdog Millionaire) has been sharply criticised as "poverty porn". Well-respected local filmmakers have described the film as titillating western audiences with its portrayal of slum life. Priyadarshan Nair, an India film-maker, complained strongly that the film makes a mockery of India. "It's nothing but a mediocre Bollywood film, which has used references from several Hindi films very smartly," he wrote in the newspaper India Today at the weekend. "India is not Somalia. We are one of the foremost nuclear powers in the world, our satellites are roaming the universe. Our police commissioners' offices don't look like shacks and there are no blind children begging in the streets of Mumbai." Even some who like the movie are unhappy with its title. "Dog is really offensive for us Indians," says Krishna Pujari, a former street child who now organises ethical tours of the slum.

Yeah, no shit Boyle! Your calling an Indian street-child "Slumdog" is like a white person using the N-word. This is not the f**king Raj and we're not your f**king coolies.

indieWIRE flays it as a "A noisy, sub-Dickens update on the romantic tramp's tale. Poverty can be so much fun with M.I.A.'s ubiquitous "Paper Planes" pop-pop and ching-ching throughout. Jamal's success on the TV show makes him a hero to slumdogs everywhere, but he doesn't care about being rich. He just wants to be with Latika. Quite instructive to the billions of poor people in the world foolishly aspiring to subsistence, let alone wealth! Love is all Jamal needs. Love and a lobotomy." Another disection of the structural flaws of this sub-par film is on this blog.

On other fronts, we had a kick-ass Winter Masquerade Ball last weekend and the organization of London Business School Crossroads Art Exhibition is going smoothly. I'm debating whether I should accept a second internship with Accenture's ADP program. Its 7 weeks and ultra-cool! ADP provides strategic advice to nonprofit organizations, foundations and donor organizations operating in the development sector, helping these organizations achieve social and economic development goals. Sample engagements include building supply chain capabilities for a humanitarian aid organization in South Africa and developing an IT industry growth strategy for the government of Guyana. But after 10 weeks of an I-banking internship will this be overkill and am I better off working pro-bono for a local non-profit? Plus I'm planning on moving to Portobello Road before fall trimester starts in October. But I'm so tempted to do this …. plus its for a good cause! Decisions, decisions!!!

Dis’es, Dings, Zings and Investment Banking Bling ….

Firstly, thanks to you, my readers, for your comments about my blog and about LBS. I usually suppress them to maintain confidentiality and so I can tell it like it is in my response -- but feel free to email me your questions at sbuxespresso@gmail.com. I'll try to respond within the week.

By now you've figured out that Milkround is an artifact of British uni recruiting. A week of 9 to 9 corporate presentations and schmoozfests. My networking season started much earlier, during week 3 of the fall trimester, and a career change to banking in this economy meant having had 30-minute coffee chats with 4-5 bankers per bank, times 7-8 banks, times as many trips to Canary Wharf or The City.

Prepping for finance interviews means studying every major story in the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times EVERYDAY, having your point of view on credit default swaps, and knowing where US, UK and ECB interest rates, 10 year bond yields and currency futures are headed. You need to know what the Dow Jones closed at and what the FTSE opened at, and why. Additionally it's a given that you know your garden variety Valuations, WACC, DCF and LBOs in and out and can speak knowledgably about major M&A deals, providing both a strategic and transactional perspective

– whiteknight takes king financed by stock swap, cash on hand and debt … endgame!

Knowing that the absence of a finance background made switching careers difficult, I had to hedge bets with consulting. This doubled the interviewing pain. Between prepping for i-banking interviews AND practicing consulting cases, I threw my resume into the ring and got a few Dis'es (when your application is outright dissed). But then, I got love from the usual suspects: McKinsey, BCG, Roland Berger, ZS Associates, Accenture, Deloitte, Parthenon Group, Deutsche Bank, Nomura (Lehman Brothers EU), Mubadala (PE/Sovereign Fund)

A few Dings (when you get a post-interview f@#k off email) later – I have a Zing that counts, an offer from Nomura IBD and I'm taking it.

Thus ends a month and half of hardcore prep, sleepless nights and daily back-to-back interviews (My personal best was 3 interviews in a day for a total of 7 hours). I am so pooped and emotionally spent, having had 5 hours of sleep in 2 days and a fat looming finance exam on Saturday – but I had to burp out this post to let ya'll know "All's well, I'm back in business and I finally have my life back. My B-school bet paid off – I'm at the numero uno B-school and finally, I'm an investment wanker!"

Do you believe in rankings?

London Business School tops FT’s MBA tables

By Della Bradshaw and Michael Jacobs

Financial Times, Published: January 25 2009 23:01 | Last updated: January 25 2009 23:01

A European business school has topped the table and a Chinese institution has been placed in the top 10 for the first time since the Financial Times began its rankings of MBA programmes a decade ago.

London Business School is ranked in the number one slot jointly with the Wharton school at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously only two US schools, Wharton and Harvard business school, have held the number one slot.

The FT MBA 2009 ranking also charts the rise of the Asian business schools. Shanghai-based China European International Business School (Ceibs) was ranked number eight – becoming the first Chinese business school to make the top 10.

Three Asian schools, two in China and one in India, feature in the top 20. This does not include Insead, the French institution ranked five, which has a campus in Singapore as well as in France. London Business School has been ranked among the top in the world since the inaugural FT rankings began in 1999, when it was placed eighth. Since then, the UK school has climbed slowly up the table, ranking second last year.

As well as having the number one-ranked full-time MBA programme, LBS also tops the FT Executive MBA rankings with the EMBA Global programme that it runs jointly with Columbia Business School in New York. EMBA programmes are designed for working managers.

The ranking of the top 100 full-time MBA programmes is dominated by American business schools, with 56 of the 100 based in the US.

Yet the FT rankings have also over time reflected the growth in high-quality MBA programmes outside the US, first in Europe and more recently in China, India and Singapore. In 1999, 17 of the top 20 schools and 31 of the top 50 were from the US, while in 2009 there are only nine US schools in the top 20 and 23 in the top 50.

Many Asian students are preferring to study for MBAs in their own country. They are being well rewarded. Salary data collected for the rankings show that Chinese students who study in China receive comparable salaries to those who go to a US or European business school. Indian students who study in India and then work in India after they graduate receive the highest salary increase of all Indian students. Their pay outranked that of their peers who complete MBA courses in Europe or the US.

US graduate schools have suffered due to tightened visa restrictions, although a change of policy has since shortened processing times and led to a rebound in applications. But 65 per cent of US graduate schools still reported fewer international applicants last year than in 2003, according to the Council of Graduate Schools.

The FT MBA ranking 2009 was compiled from data supplied by 9,000 business school alumni working in 130 countries.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

All These Things That I’ve Done……

Having been M.I.A., I have decided to burp out a post rather than remain post-less forever.Now that I have all my appointments, classes, club and career events firmly programmed and synced between my iPhone and the school's Outlook Exchange server, at the very least, I know how in-deep I am. On a more mundane note, after successfully moving into my flat the toughest parts were finding a drying rack (since tumble dryers in this country do f*** all) and enticing British Telecom to come setup our landline so we could get internet. My flat-mates and I finally had to resort to rigging a monster human size mousetrap with a bit of cheddar outside our block of flats, to trap the BT installation engineer. It worked!

I'm visiting NYC banks at the end of October for a career trek. The rumors of the death of investment banking are highly exaggerated. Most LBS 2009 I-banking summer interns have offers in London. Hopefully they won't be rescinded – it remains to be seen. No point getting one's skivvies in a bunch. Here is my simplistic take on this - some banks were stupid, some were greed and some were plain unlucky. Like my Financial Accounting Applications Professor Oktay Urcan says (in a Turkish accent) "Unlucky camel gets eaten in desert by polar bear."

LBS classes usually start at 9ish and go till 5ish with a couple of hours in between. Then its club events, company sessions, speaker series, company visits etc. till well into the evening, which means the best time to study is still early mornings and mid- afternoons. Most evenings I'm double or triple booked and typically get done by 10PM, which is when most people head to Mumtaz for Indian or Ali Baba for late night shwarma. Friday's are typically no-class day for most streams (equivalent of cohorts).

LBS MBA Wannabees, here is some of what one can expect in the first few eight weeks of school –

• Tattoo - THIS IS HOW LBS ROCKS
  
• Two business statistics case studies that will drive you nuts
  
• Loads of introspective assignments including writing your own eulogy. Career Services and LBS Leadership curricula developers expect that these will help you become a good leader, general manager and/or help you pick the right career.
  
• Loads of assignments, pre-readings, follow-up reading and case studies for Finance, Accounting, Strategy, Corporate Ethics, Managerial Economics and General Management
  
• Loads of club kick-off meetings
  
• Two consulting case study competitions (AT Kearney and LEK/LBS), an (IPO Challenge Chicago GSB) and a couple of Venture Capital style competitions
  
• Loads of company presentations and speaker series. There was a particularly interesting talk by Jim O'Neill, Chief Economist at Goldman Sachs and the originator of the BRICs concept. His comments on what the developing world will look like in 2050 and the role India will play in it are summarized in this interesting paper.
  
• Loads of visits to companies (I visited Merrill Lynch in the City for a reception and then played a portfolio management game at Morgan Stanley's Canary Wharf offices)
  
• Preparing for career treks. LBS has one to Hong Kong, Dubai and NYC each over the next few months
  

I am currently involved with a bunch of clubs and organizations I'll post more as events occur

• Healthcare club – I'm helping with the annual conference
  
• Responsible Business Club – I'm helping arrange speaker series
  
• Finance Club – Just another member for now
  
• Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – check 'em out
  
• Tearfund – through my church, International charity focused on social justice
  
• Pratham – Organizing the annual Indo-German Business Forum in Dusseldorf, Nov 13
  

  This year's forum is being hosted by Pratham, the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce and the Indian Government. We hope to promote Indo-German commerce by educating business leaders regarding existing opportunities, by fostering insight-generation, and by providing a forum to initiate and develop business ties. The event also raises funds to support child literacy and education programmes in India. This year's forum will highlight the importance of innovation as a key driver for sustained success and growth for both indigenous and global companies operating in India, with a focus on the Lifesciences, Healthcare, Automotive and Energy sectors. Indian and German business leaders will propose ways to encourage Indo-German collaboration in order to overcome challenges posed by the economic downturn to future investments in innovation in these sectors.
  

  The event will feature several speakers and panelists including Ajay Piramal, CEO of Nicholas Piramal, Klaus Esser, Managing Partner at General Atlantic, Gautam Thapar, Chairman of Avantha Group, Nachiket Mor, Deputy MD at ICICI Bank, Amit Mehra, Managing Director at Reuters Marketlight and R. V. Shahi, Former Secretary of The Indian Ministry of Power.

A couple of B-school essays

It seems that my last posting of a B-school essay was well received and "advice" was sought by some future applicants. The only "advice" I can give is a) be yourself, b) make your examples short, pithy and colorful, c) tell a story that stands out, d) strongly link your past experiences with your future goals, e) avoid vagueness at all cost f) don't assume the reader's ability to read between the lines, and above all f) answer the question clearly. And yes, have someone else who knows you and has a command of the language, read and critique your essays. I could go on, but posting a few of my essays might just be more helpful. Here are two essays I wrote for Columbia GSB and London Business School.

Essay 4 (b): If you were given a free day and could spend it anywhere, in any way you choose, what would you do?

I love art, history and education through travel. I visited Florence last year and couldn’t get enough of the city. I’d spend my free day on the streets of the city of the Medici. I’d be woken early by the pealing of church bells. I’d stop by a neighborhood trattoria and jostle with the locals for pastries and a steaming cappuccino. I’d strike up a conversation with friendly faces and find out what the day held for them.

I’d hurry to stand in the line snaking outside the Uffizi so I could see Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’. I’d stroll through the sculpture garden in the Piazza della Signoria and make charcoal rubbings off Ghiberti’s doors at the Baptistery. I’d climb the 414 steps of the Campanile for breath-taking views of the city and the Tuscan countryside, much of which hasn’t changed in centuries. I’d spend time crawling through the vaults of Brunelleschi’s Dome of the Basilica del Fiore, an engineering marvel to this day with the world’s largest masonry span. When the church was built to be the largest house of worship, the neighboring streets and houses were actually lowered so that the Basilica would look more imposing that it actually was. I’d revisit Michelangelo’s David and take sneaky photos of it. I’d have to take in a pistachio gelato as I walked the cobbled stone streets of Santa Croce, which reeks of tanneries. I’d make my way to the piazza where Savonarola’s ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ blazed. I’d spend a moment in silence mourning all the works of art that civilization lost, thanks to the mad monk.

As dusk draws near, I’d avoid the ‘Menu Turistico’ for dinner. I’d buy cichetti and some homemade wine - bottled in used plastic bottles. I’d hike up one of the hills, south of the Arno river and watch the setting sun glint off the Ponte Vecchio bridge.

LBS Essay 1: In what role do you see yourself working immediately after graduation? Why? How will your past and present experiences help you achieve this? How will the London Business School MBA Programme contribute to this goal?

My post-MBA goal is to work for the Private Equity (PE) consulting practice of a tier one strategy consulting firm and to specialize in Merger and Acquisition (M&A) due diligence studies in the Indian pharmaceutical sector. Very specifically, Bain’s global reach, its strong focus on PE and pharmaceuticals and its collegial culture would provide the best career fit, enabling my long-term goals. Having relished the intellectual stimulation of tackling a variety of business problems in diverse industries in my four years of management consulting, I know that Bain would provide an exciting opportunity to further expand my ability to devise creative solutions and lead organizational change.

At Advion, a biosystems startup, I collaborated with pharmaceutical scientists to develop analytical devices which expedite drug discovery by accurately analyzing drug candidates in 1/100^th the time that other techniques require. While learning the science behind drug discovery, I also observed how Advion’s PE backers used their business consulting backgrounds and financial expertise to guide Advion’s executives on innovation and growth strategies. This foundational exposure to key aspects of the pharmaceutical industry would help me address industry-specific issues at Bain.

Following Advion, through a business strategy and operations consulting role at Stroud, I learned to facilitate operational turnarounds at multi-billion dollar corporations in sectors from food and beverage to electronics to consumer goods. Recently, I worked on the exciting transformation of a PE-owned packaging products company, leading 5-10 person teams at each of nine plants to identify a total of $40MM in profitability losses through a financial analysis and deep operational assessment. The subsequent 6-month pilot program which I led focused on improving operations efficiency, product quality, logistics and inventory management, resulting in a $7M profitability increase. I gained extensive finance and supply chain knowledge and a practical understanding of organizational change management, preparing me to lead consulting teams to solve clients’ strategic and operational problems.

After growing through two promotions, in order to gain expertise in post-merger strategy (an issue prevalent in PE,) I eventually accepted an advanced role at Accenture. I started acquiring expertise by leading two eight person case teams (client VP’s, directors, consultants) to integrate two global supply chains and realize merger synergies at a Top 3 computer manufacturer, initiatives which improved cash flow by $30MM and profits by $20MM.

The London Business School (LBS) MBA is the next logical step in refining my leadership skills, acquiring a general management aptitude and developing the financial acumen necessary for M&A due diligence in a post-MBA role at Bain. My conversations with N. Mehta (’08) and N. Patel (’06) have convinced me that LBS’s flexible curriculum would allow me to integrate the knowledge I acquire from electives in Finance, Strategy and International Management and Private Equity. Through a semester at Wharton’s healthcare program and through UCL courses such as ‘Business Enterprise Training in the Life Sciences,’ I would build my financial knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry. LBS’s global reach and its diverse community would teach me to leverage the cultural diversity inherent to consulting firms.

Having grown up in Bombay, India’s commerce hub, I understand the unparalleled benefits of being at the heart of a cosmopolitan capital. LBS, with its proximity to 70% of the FTSE 100 and 75% of the Fortune 500, would give me an unbeatable edge in achieving my professional goals.