August 19th, 2008 — UF MBA
MBA orientation kicked off yesterday. There are only 38 37 of us in the Class of 2010 and everyone seems cool and down to earth. The variety of life experience is much more diverse than I expected. There’s a journalist in the class, an ex-fighter pilot and ex-Peace Core(r). In fact, the class is so diverse that none of my classmates shares a birth city with another and perhaps more surprisingly there are only seven classmates that hold an undergrad degree from UF. I expected at least a third of the class to have had one. Equally more surprising is that one of my classmates is also from Los Angeles and was friends with a girl I know back in L.A. I had never met this kid until yesterday. It’s amazing how small the world can be.
After the breakfast meet and greet we went into in Stuzin Hall and were bombarded by speeches, information and opportunites. There is a lot of opportunity to be extremely involved in the program and in extracurricular activities and I plan on diving head first into as much as I can handle. They also gave us our class stats and they are quite impressive. The average GPA of my class is a 3.4, the average GMAT is a shade under 690, the average age is 27 and the average years of work experience is four. I am not sure how I cajoled my way into a class so impressive but I like it.
Day Two was supposed to be our Ropes obstacle course out at Lake Wauberg but Tropical Storm Fay cancelled that for us. Ropes has been rescheduled for Saturday but of course Fay can’t make up her mind which way she wants to blow and it turns out we could have done the course today. I am convinced that it will rain on Saturday and we will be the first MBA class at UF to not do the ropes course. So instead of Ropes we had our Developing Yourself leadership day. We received our DiSC evaluations, participated in a fun listening exercise, wrote the alphabet chicken scratch style with our non-dominant hands and practiced our elevator pitches. It was interesting and interactive stuff. Hopefully once school starts our real classes will be as interactive as our orientation has been so far.
August 7th, 2008 — Etcetera, Gainesville
I spent the last four days up in Gainesville painting my new house and I learned several interesting things about my new pad and neighborhood.
- It’s a bitch to paint a house that has thirteen foot ceilings. My body is sore in places I didn’t know existed. Last time I ever paint a rental. Probably.
- I am only a five minute bike ride from Stuzin and Matherly and Bryan Hall. Even though it is a quick jaunt to school I am guaranteed to arrive at class drenched in sweat.
- It is common practice in Gainesville to leave an old stove sitting on the lawn. In fact it is encouraged.
- Gainesville has a a thriving tranny population. My house sits in the heart of it. Lovely.
- Gainesville is crawling with cops. I must have seen at least 30 cruisers in the four days I was there. Strangely, they leave the trannys alone.
- The previous tenants were idiots. It’s okay to put an empty box of cereal up the chimney instead of the trash. It will eventually burn away anyways, right guys?
July 31st, 2008 — Accounting, Textbooks, UF MBA
Every student admitted to the two-year program at UF is expected to bone up on his or her accounting skills prior to setting foot on campus. We’re given two options, either take an introductory accounting course at a local community college or buy the Essentials of Accounting workbook. UF strongly encourages us to take the community college class but that wasn’t a realistic option for me so I went with the workbook.
That might have been a mistake.
This book was preposterously easy to complete and its possible, err probable, that I didn’t learn anything. The questions in the book are almost entirely fill-in-the-blank questions and each blank is typically pre-filled with the first letter of the answer. Also, each question is preceded by a statement that includes the answer. Sounds easy, right? That’s because it is easy. My two-week old nephew could pass a pop quiz on the material covered in this book. Take a look at this question pulled from the chapter involving debits and credits.
In the language of accounting, the left side of an account is called the debit side, and the right side is called the credit side. Thus, instead of saying that increases in cash are recorded on the left side of the Cash account and decreases are recorded on the right side, accountants say that increases are recorded on the ________ side and decreases are recorded on the ________ side.
I blew through this Mad Libs version of accounting in a matter of days, missing only three questions along the way. I know I must have learned some accounting, it would be impossible not to have since the material is repeated ad nausem. However, I can’t shake the feeling that I only acquired a superficial knowledge of accounting and that come day two I’ll be lost.
I hope I didn’t screw up my MBA by not going to community college. Accounting can’t be this easy.
July 29th, 2008 — Etcetera, Images
UF has been ranked the number one party school in America by The Princeton Review. (Check out the rest of the top twenty here). I’m sure this idiot put us over the top.
July 25th, 2008 — Links
July 23rd, 2008 — GMAT
I’m all for tight security to minimize cheating on a test as important as the GMAT, but the new security measures GMAC is rolling this month are ridiculous.
“For decades, the world’s leading business schools have relied upon the GMAT exam as the best predictor of a candidate’s academic success. We have an ethical responsibility to business schools and students to preserve the integrity of the GMAT and the application process, so insuring the highest level of security is critical. Pearson VUE is an excellent partner in this capacity because it, too, places an emphasis on security and responsibility to our customers. PalmSecure helps us respond to the needs of our international marketplace. It is a more accurate, more efficient, and less invasive way to ensure that each test taker has a single GMAT record, thus preventing individuals from taking the test for others.”
GMAC rolls out the handprint scan program in India and Korea this month and will expand the program to the U.S. by the fall. Lovely.
July 23rd, 2008 — Images, Marketing
This great visual from Sam Lawrence shows you everything you need to know about the state of marketing in 2008. As marketing continues to expand its relationship with conversational media we’ll need a new set of metrics to measure effectiveness. A shift from quantitative statistics to tonality and subject matter of mentions is inevitable.
July 21st, 2008 — GMAT, Images
NFL Average Wonderlic Scores by Position
Check this interesting graphical representation of the average NFL Wonderlic score by position. The Wonderlic test is basically the NFL’s version of the GMAT. A high Wonderlic score can improve a players draft stock and land them a large pay day just like a high GMAT score can help get you into the business school of your dreams. However, the GMAT isn’t the only factor an Adcom analyzes in your business school application and the Wonderlic isn’t the only factor an NFL team analyzes when making a draft pick. In fact, you could argue a lot of NFL teams ignore a player’s Wonderlic score. Vince Young reportedly scored a six (out of a possible fifty) on the Wonderlic in 2006 and was still drafted 3rd overall by the Tennessee Titans. The Titans obviously valued his experience and leadership ability over a simple score on a scantron. That was wise of them. Today, if the NFL held that draft again, Vince Young would be drafted first overall.
It’s interesting to note in the infographic that the faster position players, the wide receivers and defensive backs, have lower average Wonderlic scores than their teammates on the line. Perhaps brains and brawn are not mutually exclusive after all?
Source of Infographic: Ben Fry (via Richard Florida)
July 18th, 2008 — Links
July 16th, 2008 — Marketing, Videos
