Welcome to MBA Podcaster, the only broadcast source for cutting edge information and advice on the MBA application process.

I’m Heidi Pickman. Let’s say you’re a dozen years out of school. You have a good job that’s challenging and gives you lots of responsibility, but you feel like you need something to get you to the next level in your career. Or maybe you’re an entrepreneur who has a great idea for a company but need some help to develop your plan and ensure it works.

But you like your job. And it’s been years since you’ve been
in school. You wonder if business school is the right thing to do.

You might want to consider an executive MBA, usually referred
to as EM-BA. Whether you are full time, part time or in the executive program,
you earn the same degree. An MBA is an MBA degree. Where you are in life usually
determines which program is appropriate. And for someone who has an established
career, with a decade or so of experience, an EMBA program is a good choice.

EMBA programs vary on the structure and length, but they
usually come in some kind of combination of weekend programs with a period of
intensive study. And many recruiters prefer part-time and executive MBA students
because of the work students put into the programs and the balancing act they’ve
done.

On today’s show we bring you reflections from students who
are currently balancing work, school and more. How do they do it? Do they get
the same opportunities as regular, full-time MBA students? If you’re only there
on weekends, what’s the faculty interaction like? Is there any synergy between
school and work?

Matthew Cooper is enrolled in the Berkeley-Columbia
program and eagerly addresses the last question. He started a bioinformatics
company ? called Syapse – with a couple of friends from Stanford. And he
couldn’t agree more that there are many practical applications of the EMBA in
his workplace.

Matt I’ve done now four class projects directly on the
business that I’ve started. And a lot of those projects provided me with the
rational and the confidence and the sales pitch that got me funded last quarter
when nobody else was getting funded. A lot of those projects provided that
background and experience in order to get that done. In terms of applicability,
it’s scary how applicable it is.

He elaborates with several specific examples.

Matt One was Leading and Managing Organizations, where
we did a project where we examined ? because of confidentiality, I can’t
disclose the two organizations ? but let’s say a large Swiss pharmaceutical
company’s acquisition of a large South San Francisco biotech company and the
particular cultural implications that can ensue. Let’s see, another one that we
just turned in was for our strategic management class basically defining the
corporate strategy that my new business is following. We shared with them our
corporate strategy, my vision for the company and I had the pleasure of my
classmates analyzing it.

Cooper is in good company. Ravi Mallela manages Equity
Capital for Wells Fargo. He is an EMBA student at UCLA’s Anderson School of
Management, class of 2011. His class work turned into huge bottom line benefits
for his company.

Ravi We had a course on statistics. I deal with the
regulatory agencies – Federal Reserve, OCC. Based on the information that I
worked through during the course in the fall semester, fall quarter and also
engaging with the professor, I developed a technique that essentially lowered
our capital that we were holding for the bank from a calculation that we were
holding at 10 to 15 percent, that five percent benefit translates to $5 billion
in capital that the bank can use to fund loans and new acquisition
opportunities. It’s real. When you’re in there and you’re engaging with the
professors, you can take whatever you’re learning in that time and expand it
significantly and it impacts your organization in a real way.

So work and school can be perfect complements to each other.
You can definitely make the case for your boss to let you off work on a Thursday
or a Friday or even pay for your tuition if s/he knows that what you learn in an
EMBA program is going to help the company. And it’s not unheard of when someone
gets promoted while still going to school.

Most schools have tracks, like an entrepreneurial track, a
finance track, and/or a marketing track. You’ll want to pick a school that is a
good fit depending on what you want to do and culture.

Brian I came to Anderson, mostly because I wanted to
focus on entrepreneurship and it’s a big focus at Anderson. And I wanted to take
advantage of the outstanding faculty that we have in that area. I’ve been able
to take classes in the full time program. I’ve taken classes in the FEMBA, the
part time program at Anderson and the executive MBA program. I’ve been able to
tailor my degree to the specialty areas that are important to me. Two of the
areas that are important to me are sustainable management and entrepreneurship.
I’ve been able to study under leaders. For example, one of my professors in my
green energy entre class is a VC at Khosla Ventures, which is one of the top VC
firms in the bay area for sustainable technology. I also worked with Jeff
Scheinrock, who was the first CFO at Packard Bell. So, I’ve been able to work
with outstanding faculty members in all three programs. I’ve been able to tailor
my degree to the specialty areas that were most important to me.

You may wonder if the relationship between faculty and
students is as good in the EMBA program as it is in the full time program. Do
EMBA students get same faculty attention and opportunities for mentorship as
full-time students? As Caroll alluded to and the students I spoke with backed
him up, EMBA students seem to get more attention and very specific help.

Annie Phan a recent Wharton undergraduate, works as a
hedge fund trader and attends the Wharton West program. She says the faculty is
very involved with the students.

Annie One of our students wanted to start his own
hedge fund. He was an exemplary student. One of the professors put him in touch
with a few people who were interested in seeding capital. The professor was very
open. The professor was able to put him in touch with the right people to make
those connections. On top of the professors being very willing to address the
students’ career concerns, they also go above and beyond. They offer their time,
their services as well as their personal contacts to help the student progress.

George Schmilinsky, a recent graduate of
Berkeley-Columbia and Chief Financial Officer of Vapore, Inc. says that there
are many opportunities to work with professors.

George One is independent study. So I took an
independent study with an entrepreneur professor and he was helping me with my
business and growing that business and putting together a business plan and
connecting me with VC’s, etc. I continue after graduating working with
professors at Berkeley in the same area at Lester Center in entrepreneurship.
And I know some of my classmates are dealing with finance professors and what
have you. The opportunities are there. Since Berkeley is right here, it’s pretty
easy to reach out to those professors. I have two professors working at the
company that I work at that are from the Berkeley-Columbia program, so I think
they’re pretty involved.

And the Berkeley-Columbia program has a beloved professor
that is very involved with the students.

George Steve Blank is a professor of ours. He was the
founder of Epiphany. He is very involved in a certain kind of entrepreneurship
where it involves iteration and he stays involved. In fact at the very end of
the program we all go to his house, which is a very nice house since he sold
Ephiphany. Impressive. At any rate, he’s another person at the program that’s
very involved in reaching out to students and keeping in touch. As long as he
knows you from class, he’ll keep in touch with you. And that kind of experience
and ties is what I really came to the program for. It’s perfect to have those
types of professors involved constantly.

Bhavik Joshi, a fellow Berkeley-Columbia alum gave
another example.

Bhavik We also have the venture capital investment
competition, which was a phenomenal experience for me personally. I lead a team
of five from my class. I am a graduate of the Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA
program, the class of 08-09. We got to participate in this competition where we
are VC’s and we had to evaluate start-ups, pitches from entrepreneurs, so we got
the opportunity to be on the other side and we were judged by real VC’s.
Actually, it was a great experience right before taking the entrepreneurship
class. We got a lot of mentorship from Professor Steve Blank. He’s phenomenal
and we all love him. Not only if you have a start-up, but for me, I worked for a
start-up and he helped me connect with his very successful past students in
bringing some of the experience and speakers that I was looking for to meet with
our management team at my start-up. Those are the kinds of things that the
professors go out of their way to do outside of class. And it was a fantastic
experience.

Joshi’s professors helped put him in touch with venture
capitalists that funded his company. He works as the global operations manager
of infrastructure for Better Place, which aims to reduce global dependency on
oil through the creation of a private system of clean energy based
transportation infrastructure.

Brian Carroll of UCLA points out that
entrepreneurship, mentorship and deep faculty involvement go hand-in-hand down
south as well as up north.

Brian I’ve gotten involved with a multi-disciplinary
program called TIP, which is Technology and Innovation Partners Program at UCLA.
And this is a multi-disciplinary program that involves engineering students,
life science students, lawyers and business school students. They are gathered
in one seminar and basically the whole notion behind this is that you’re taking
intellectual property that the research departments at UCLA are developing and
actually creating commercialization strategies for the IP itself. Another thing
too is Professor Dan Nathanson, UCLA’s renowned entrepreneurship professor. He
actually holds a weekly entrepreneurship roundtable in which student can gather
and develop their ideas that they have for new ventures and Professor Nathanson
will coach them and help them develop and take them to the next level. To give
an example of a classmate of mine, he actually took his new venture to the Rice
business plan competition and won the clean tech competition and got a $140,000
from Waste Management and he’s now in a position where he’s able to take his
venture to the next level. And those are two great examples that I’ve seen at
Anderson.

So EMBA students can hav e great experiences, do great things
at work, what about their outside lives? As if work and school weren’t enough,
some students choose to not to limit themselves to schools in their immediate
geographic location. Here’s Ravi Mallela who compares his daily commute to work
in San Francisco to his commute to school in Los Angeles.

Ravi I’ve gotta drive from my house to the BART
station. I’ve got to pass three schools along the way. That can either take me
15 minutes or it can take me 45 minutes. I’ve got to park at the BART station.
I’ve got another 10 minutes walk to the BART, wait for the BART, take the BART,
get off the BART, walk down to California and Sansome, and get up the stairs
obviously and get to work ?cuz I’m already an hour late. That experience is
significantly worse than the experience heading into LA. It is a
straightforward, straight shot. It’s an hour flight down and it’s about a 20
minute cab ride. And most of that time, you’re not worried about any of the
things that I just mentioned in my commute. So I would say it’s an enjoyable
experience.//

That enjoyable experience can be a chance to network too.

Ravi part b You get to meet up with your classmates,
you get a chance to talk to them along the way and commiserate over your usual
commuting stories. LA is a great place to go to school. I’ve been in the Bay
Area for 22 years. My heart was broken when Kirk Gibson hit that home run. And
that was my vision of LA, this awful place that robbed the Oakland A’s of a
World Series ring. But when you get there, it is just a wonderful experience.
Everything is really easy. Everything is focused on you performing to the best
of your abilities and experiencing as much as you can during that short time.
And we all from the Bay Area, leave at 5 o’clock on Saturday and I’m literally
home early enough to tuck in my kids on Saturday night.

For Mallela, commuting to school is actually relaxing. This
opened opportunities for him for graduate school beyond his immediate geographic
location. School often takes place on the weekend, which helps, too. He’s able
to concentrate entirely on school when he is there and when he’s not, he can
participate in his family life.

Sonal Sinha manages risk compliance at Visa in their
legal department and attends the Berkeley-Columbia EMBA program. As if that
isn’t enough responsibility for one person, she has two children. So what does
she have to say about balance?

Sonal I’m not going to stand up here and say it’s
going to be really easy, because then I wouldn’t be very honest and fair. It is
challenging at times. However, I think most of the challenges are in planning.
As long as you plan very well, and I mean plan way before the program starts. So
make arrangement to be able to do things that are important to you, whether they
be family or running marathons or climbing mountains, wherever your interests
lie. If you can organize your life in such a way that you can manage that and
put things on people’s calendars. I put my entire 19 month schedule for the
Berkeley-Columbia program on my entire teams’ calendar from day one. They knew
when I was going to be out of the office and they knew when I was in the office.
When I’m there I’m there 100%; but when I’m gone, I really try to be available,
but be outside. It’s manageable, it’s doable, but you have to plan for it and
that’s almost getting you 99% through.

Sinha says some weeks or semesters are easier to
handle than others.

Sinha It depends on classes you’re taking, it depends
on your experience with that subject manner. For example, there were some areas
where I felt that I didn’t have as much as professional work experience where I
had to put in more time to understand the materials and more time to catch up
than someone who worked in that field. On an average, and I think my classmates
can kind of speak to it, it can range anywhere between 10-15-20 hours onwards
per week. We just got done with our finals for term three and I have to say I
have probably put in less than two hours this week. Laughs. So I hope that
helps.

And I hope this podcast helps give you the insider’s view of
the executive MBA and guides you with your decision on whether or not an EMBA
program is right for you. To learn more about executive MBA’s, tune into “EMBA
Admissions Panel: Debunking Myths and Understanding the EMBA? a live panel
discussion with deans from EMBA programs at Berkeley-Columbia, UCLA Anderson
School of Management, and Wharton, San Francisco. They discuss their programs as
well as potential misconceptions about EMBA programs – like ‘you get a reduced
work load’ or ‘EMBA students do not intend to change jobs or careers’, and tips
for a successful application.

And for more MBA information, a transcript of this show or to register for your bi-weekly MBA podcast visit MBAPodcaster.com.

Join us on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to get the latest news and insight in the world of business school.

This is MBA Podcaster, I am Heidi Pickman. Thanks for listening and be sure to tune in next time when we
explore another topic of interest in your quest for an MBA.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:04 — 7.3MB)