Haas v/s Tepper

Bay to Breakers is so much fun!!

I ran the Bay to Breakers yesterday, and I was able to complete the course in 1:34:49. To be really honest, I quite did not run the entire course but I am extremely happy with the outcome. This was one of my goals and I have never ran this distance before. However, this was one of my 2006 New Year resolutions, and I am happy that I completed it. I am also extremely happy with my time, mainly because I did not have time to practice.

Now back to some MBA related content.

An anonymous reader asked me what where my reasons for choosing Haas EWMBA over Tepper Flexmode. I used the following criteria to arrive at my decision for choosing Haas over Tepper.

Alignment with future goals:
I wanted a general management program with focus on international business and business strategy. Apart from courses, Haas provides an excellent array of choices in both of these areas, all the way from activities like business plan competitions to international visits and conferences. Tepper's international business focus is mostly in eastern Europe and they did not have anything special worked out for flexmode participants. So Haas won my heart here.

Classroom environment:
When I attended a class at Haas, I found the people engaging in discussions and after the class, there was a general level of excitement and enthusiasm. I did not find the same to be true for Tepper. Since the classes are video-conferenced, the camera only points to a person when a student asks a question. I found a lot more of the "lecture" style of teaching and consequently I found the students surfing on the net. This difference could be a result of the fact that the class at Haas was in marketing, whereas the Tepper class was something related to statistics. The whole video-conferencing experience did not gel very well with me. So once again, Haas seemed better.

Networking possibilities:
With a class size of approx. 240 students, and a solid alumni base in the bay area, Haas was a clear winner. While, the Tepper network is not as strong, most tech companies do respect the CMU name tremendously. However with a class size of about 50 ( including folks from Lockheed etc), and the fact that Tepper Flexmode is a relatively new program, I was not sure about immediate networking gains in the Bay area.

Class Diversity:
I really believe that one can learn as much from the classmates as they do from the professors. I have a engineering background myself, and work with engineers on a daily basis. While I have tremendous respect for engineers and their brain power, I want to learn from people who are in different areas and from a different background. I spoke to about 6-7 people from the Tepper flexmode program- all of them were engineers. The total class size I think was 12 or 13 people, roughly about 50% of the students were engineers. At Haas, I found people who had engineering backgrounds but they had transitioned to things like product/people management etc. There were also other people doing things like supply chain, retail procurement, risk assessment etc. I know that in Bay area, there will be a larger number of people with engineering background, I just felt that Haas did a better job with recruiting diverse students.

Career Services:
This was a tough choice. It seemed that Tepper had a career services for students who wanted to do something completely different as well students who wanted to progress further in their existing area. Haas seemed to provide career services primarily for people who wanted a job change. Haas has added some additional resources for part time students this year. In the end this was a 50-50 with no clear winner.

Class Schedule:
My company officially supports my education endeavors _but_ when crunch time approaches, people quickly forget about others personal commitments. With Haas, I have the choice of attending the class over the weekend. At Tepper, the classes are from 3:00-7:00. Given that I have flex schedule, I am positive I could have managed to attend school in the afternoon, but given the reality of work (and the fact that I have travel from time to time), I felt the Haas' choice of attending class over the weekend was better.

Having said all of this, Tepper is still a great program in many respects. While it was a better fit than most other places, I was lucky to have a choice in this matter, and ultimately chose Haas. I think I will post a similar evaluation for Haas v/s Duke.