Beat The GMAT

dmateer25 · Fri Oct 30, 2009 8:14 pm

I decided to chronicle my b-school journey. I will try to update this thread regularly and use it as my blog.

I already completed the GMAT, so I will begin this blog with my research on various MBA programs.

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dmateer25 · Fri Oct 30, 2009 8:17 pm

So I have been getting ready for my campus visit to Kenan-Flagler. I didn't see a lot of information about what to wear, so I decided to write a post on what I feel is appropriate for different types of campus visits. To me, there are really three different types of campus visits.

1) Campus visit meeting with students, touring campus, and sitting in on a class (no interview)
2) Interview only
3) Both 1 & 2 in the same visit

Campus visit meeting with students, touring campus, and sitting in on a class (no interview)
My visit to Kenan-Flageler will fall under number one. So the question is "what is appropriate to where for a campus visit only with no interview?" In my opinion, you don't want to stick out too much when you are meeting with the students and sitting in on a class. Therefore, I feel that business casual is appropriate. I will be wearing a pair of dress pants and a dress shirt. In my opinion, a pair of nice khakis is appropriate as well.

Interview Only
This is a no-brainer. You MUST where business professional to an interview. I won't go into details on what type of suit to buy because I plan to do that in a future post.

Campus visit and interview
This is probably the most complicated scenario of the three. Again, you must where a suit to the interview portion of the visit. However, you may consider going with a business casual approach for the rest of the visit. This is appropriate IF you have a break to change. My suggestion would be to lose the suit jacket and keep the shirt and tie on. However, I would recommend reaching out to a current student to see what he/she recommends.

My next post will be an update on how the campus visit went and my initial feelings of the school.

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dmateer25 · Mon Nov 02, 2009 2:43 pm

Kenan-Flagler Visit

I had my visit to Kenan-Flagler this afternoon. Overall, I was pretty impressed with the school and feel like I would fit in well. Below is my detailed debrief of the visit.

Arrival
I got to the admissions office about 40 minutes early and it was filled with ten other students and a first year student to answer questions while we were waiting. It was tough to really ask questions in that setting, so that wasn’t very valuable. However, it was good for the perspective students who were waiting to interview. It seemed to calm them all down. Also, I found out that I was one of only two that were visiting only and not interviewing. Thus, I was the only guy that wasn’t in a suit. However, my attire made me look like a student. Therefore, I stand by my decision to wear business casual.

Lunch
Once all of the students got to the admissions office, we went downstairs to the café to have lunch. The café was not bad, but not great either. I sat by a second year student at lunch and had the opportunity to ask a lot of the questions that I was interested in. She was VERY passionate about Kenan-Flagler. Overall, lunch was great and I asked a lot of questions. A lot of the other perspective students seemed a little shy to ask questions, so I was happy to fill the void. After lunch, we went back up to the admissions office to wait for students to bring us to on a tour.

Tour
I was impressed with the McColl building. The study rooms were great and there were a lot of them. The students seemed to be very collaborative. The tour guide I had was actually doing his first tour, so it could have been better. Not much else to say about the tour.

Class
I got to sit in on a Marketing class. I guess I was lucky; I got a great professor that I discussed with the second year student at lunch. He started the class with welcoming the perspective students. Then he had the two of us introduce ourselves to the class. The class was great and very welcoming. I actually sat by a student that went to high school in Pittsburgh (small world)! The class was interesting and he talked about different ways to price. He reviewed the demand curve form microeconomics and then went into price bundling. The class was very interactive and the students were really interested in learning.

Final Thoughts
The best part in my opinion was sitting in on the class. I could definitely see myself fitting into that type of classroom atmosphere! Overall, I was very impressed with Kenan-Flagler. However, this was my first school visit. I don’t really have anything to compare it against yet. I will be able to judge better once I visit a few more schools.

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dragoljubce · Mon Nov 09, 2009 11:25 am

I had the same experience at UNC few weeks ago. BTW, what do you think about candidates not being very talkative? It was the same during my visit. I was the only one asking tough questions, other candidates were mostly interested in student life type of questions. Weird...

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dmateer25 · Mon Nov 09, 2009 2:54 pm

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dragoljubce · Tue Nov 10, 2009 5:49 pm

I was in marketing class. It was good.
Well, I moved to Triangle area 10 years ago, so I am very well aware of the reputation of both UNC & Duke and know their campuses inside and out. Since I will be here after a graduation, Duke's national recognition doesn't do much for me. In fact, locals here don't look too fondly upon rich Duke grads. So, I am completely biased toward UNC. Not to mention in-state tuition.
At the end of the day, I would be thrilled to get into either school.

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beatthegmat · Tue Nov 10, 2009 9:49 pm

This is awesome!

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dmateer25 · Wed Nov 11, 2009 7:52 pm

If anyone is curious, here is a timeline with myGMAT and b-school progress. I plan to apply to programs next year.

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beatthegmat · Wed Nov 11, 2009 8:20 pm

NICE! I love this visual timeline.

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dragoljubce · Thu Nov 12, 2009 6:55 am

LOL! Do you want to know my timeline? For years I wanted to get EMBA, but couldn't bring myself to sacrifice time with my family to get yet another Master degree. This summer I decided MBA is what I want, so I decided to go back to school full-time.

UNC doesn't require GMAT for EMBA for people with advanced degrees in science, so I though the same principle would apply for a daytime program. Boy, was I wrong. I though that GMAT was no big deal; wrong again. SO, that's what my life is all about for the past 2 month: GMAT and writing application essays.

How's that for a timeline Razz

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beatthegmat · Thu Nov 12, 2009 9:57 am

Thanks dragoljubce for sharing your experience--a very common story too, sounds super stressful!

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dmateer25 · Thu Nov 12, 2009 2:52 pm

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Don Wrigley · Wed Nov 18, 2009 4:27 pm

When do you plan on applying? I would like to visit schools at some point this spring, but don't plan on applying until fall 2010 (for fall 2011 admission). Do any prospective students take visits so early? I'd also like to visit UNC at one point Smile

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dmateer25 · Wed Nov 18, 2009 4:38 pm

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Don Wrigley · Wed Nov 18, 2009 7:08 pm

Thanks for the info, I feel better about scheduling my appointments (I planned on calling the admissions office and asking them if it's a good time to visit, but I'd imagine they can be biased one way or the other), I'm glad to know I'm not the only one thinking the way you are.

I have 3 days to take off work in March and drive down toward north carolina (plan on visiting UVA, Duke, UNC). The info in this thread is very good--keep it coming.

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