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Columbia Business School

A Fall Summary. Columbia Business School MBA 2011.

By ⋅ February 22, 2010 ⋅ Email This ⋅ Print ⋅ Post a comment
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Columbia University's Butler Library at nighttime
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Fact I am posting this a week before Spring midterms gives you a sense of how over-scheduled CBS MBAs are.

First term at Columbia Business School was intense. That’s what everyone says when speaking of their MBA experience. Still nothing quite prepares you for it. Academics plays only a bit-part in the experience. The rest encompasses recruiting (probably the biggest time-drain), extra-curricular (clubs etc) and socializing (cluster etc).
It is possible to abstain from much of the non-academic side but few MBA students do, it’s an integral part of the experience and the learning.

Core & Cluster.
Columbia divides the incoming class into clusters of about 60 to 70 students each. It also mandates a core set of subjects that everyone must take (or test out of by taking exemption exams). Both of these are controversial parts of the CBS experience. My cluster (G’11) seems to have an awesome collegiate comradeship going and an impressive social calendar of events (although I am not particularly active in cluster life). Friends have spoken to me of other clusters with much more friction and a more competitive culture.
Core classes include Corporate Finance, Accounting, Leadership, Operations, Statistics, Strategy, Economics and Marketing. Most of the professors have been incredible, a few have been shockingly disappointing (in my cluster, this came down to professors either being new to teaching or bored of teaching).
The unpredictability of the experiences and the lack of choice are what make these controversial topics at Columbia. I still think a core curriculum makes sense as part of the business education but wish more diligence was involved in selecting the core professors. Students rightly feel they are paying a lot of money and are not happy when forced to take classes with uninterested or unready teachers. As for the cluster, it’s the only way of organizing 700 students and allows for a more intimate setting to get to know your peers. The flip-side is it tends to produce silos making it difficult to connect with peers outside the cluster.

Having said that business school can be incredibly social with lots of (non-recruiting) events to choose from most nights. Most of these seem to revolve around alcohol although there are also cultural / sporting happenings too. Alcohol is a big part of school. We received an email a few months ago from a non-drinking prospective student asking whether it would impact his experience. A qualified yes was most people’s response. I have a couple of friends at CBS who don’t drink or drink very lightly and they have had great times but at times have felt a little left out. The mercurial will leave CBS having met the 700 classmates (the super mercurial will have also met most of the 2nd years and in their 2nd year, the 1st years too). Almost everyone will have learnt about new cultures on others sides of the world via the overstated but still relatively international student body.

Community.
I recall reading the BusinessWeek forums when applying to business school and seeing the oft-repeated reputation of CBS as a commuter school – one where people come to class and leave, lacking the community of more secluded non-NY schools. Nothing can be further from the truth. Community is taken very seriously at CBS and the students are for the most part very involved in the school. This is obvious from day one when you are greeted by crazy energetic 2nd year peer advisors (who take time out from their holidays to introduce 1st years to the CBS experience and who are all legends in their own rights).
Combined with the school’s infamous happy hours every Thursday (free beer for all!) and all the extra-curricular activities at school, there is an amazing spirit of community that I love.

Finance.
CBS has a reputation for being a finance school. Proximity to Wall St, impressive faculty and of course being the philosophical home of value investing ensure this. It is more true than you might imagine (CBS also brands itself to varying degrees as a great school for Media / Retail / Luxury / Social Enterprise / Entrepreneurship). It is an overwhelmingly finance oriented school. The supposed vilification of Wall St the press harps on about definitely bypassed Uris Hall. The enthusiasm for careers on Wall St is everywhere and Goldman Sachs is still the Golden Catch. Some of the really smart ambitious kids seem more interested in Private Equity, Venture Capital and Hedge Fund opportunities which nevertheless are not easy to come by.
The finance focus paradoxically creates a strong outsider community for those students interested in non-finance careers.

Media / Tech.
CBS is rightly proud of its media ties. Again the NY location is key and the school makes the most of it. The Media Management Association is one of the larger and more active groups on campus. The focus though is on old media (again a reflection of NY businesses). There are some great media faculty and electives (Jonathan Knee, Sharad Devarajan etc) on offer and lots of amazing lunch talks.
It’s probably not so strong on the techier side of things or even on the new media. Boston or the West Coast probably have an advantage here.

Entrepreneurship.
I am not sure how this compares to other schools but CBS seems to be a place people come to to land a corporate job rather than start a company. The Lang Center are very active but the CBS culture doesn’t feel especially entrepreneurial. Having said that the weak job market does seem to be encouraging CBS MBAs to explore entrepreneurship. Applications to the Greenhouse program were at a record high this year.

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  • str82ais

    This is a fine summary – thank you for sharing.

    Questions it opens up for me:

    1- Why is Columbia so keen on elitism? It seems to me that the experiences you sketch are centred around building a false sense of elitism.

    2- Does elitism work?

    3- Are MBAs necessary?

    4- How can Columbia continue to spawn greedy, Goldman Sachs-motivated grads in this new age?

    5- Alcohol consumption in the name of community, does that not tell you all you need to know about the type of relationships being engendered here (i.e., short-term, feel-good, …)?

  • mbastartupgirl

    I disagree with the entrepreneurial comment a bit. There are a lot of people doing startups or interested in startups. Intro to Venturing for this semester was out bid and went for 1000+ points. I think a lot are interested, but similar to Boston schools, they may not start something right after business school with no pay, but consider bootstrapping it instead (using FT job to fund their own interests).

    We also should mention the consulting craze that took over the campus (the finance/consulting/marketing craze I should say). The school does get taken over by traditional brands like MBB (mckinsey/bain/bcg). In my opinion, Columbia gives you the best of both worlds – finance definitely, consulting definitely, and then valid paths into other fields with structure to find your own way (ie. entrepreneurship).

  • mbastartupgirl

    I'm not sure about the elitist aspect here – we all come from very different backgrounds, international, domestic, rich, poor, very religious not… We do live in a bubble, but that's the same for most business schools and most corporate jobs as well. There are community development programs we participate in as well, around campus, around the city and around the world.
    Check out Pangea http://www.pangeaadvisors.org/ These get us out of our little bubble and to apply some of our experience and bschool knowledge to the real world and real people.

    MBAs are not necessary – they are an investment in yourself. it depends what you want to do with your career and the types of experience you want to have. That said, I'm very happy i made the decision because it allowed me to be more independent with my LT career choices…. and of course to meet very cool people in bschool from thousands of miles away like Shehab.

  • http://shehabhamad.com/blog shehab

    1) Surprised by this question in the sense elitism wasn't on my mind when I wrote the post. Not surprised in the sense you parsed through the post to ask some typically insightful q's. I agree with MBAStartupGirl that the Columbia Business is diverse, but only up to a degree in my mind. In general I am guessing leading B-School student bodies are skewed towards the privileged. This is maybe even more pronounced in the international circles as there's far fewer financial aid / fellowship options for non-US citizens.
    As for CBS fostering a false sense of elitism, a qualified yes is my response. There's a sense of 'how great we are to have made it to CBS' indoctrination that takes place early on in the MBA experience. Though that's probably helpful before the inevitable ego-crushing forces descend when the full-force of keeping up with academics, clubs and recruiting hits (and that's before you throw rejections into the mix – more on that when I post on recruiting).

    2) I do think you join a relatively exclusive club when you accept a place at CBS and that club works. The brand opens up doors that otherwise would not have been accessible to you. The alumni network is helpful and again gives you access to companies / industries etc you may not have had previously. If that's what you mean by your question, then my answer is yes, it works.

    3) Absolutely NOT. Its primary function is to accelerate your career and / or help you re-orient your career trajectory.

    4) Don't be fooled into thinking this is a new post-greed age. Greed is alive and powerful as it always will be.

    5) Alcohol is one of the the world's greatest social lubricants! It's especially helpful in creating cohesion amongst such a huge and diverse student body. Having said that, it is obvious some life-long, deep relationships are formed alongside the more casual socializing. There is also plenty of other group activities that foster stronger relationship building (the various trips and industry focused competitions have been great in this respect for me).

  • http://shehabhamad.com/blog shehab

    Agree re: consulting, will be writing a recruiting post soon.

    Disagree re: entrepreneurship. I am guessing CBS is similar to LBS, Harvard, Wharton and Chicago in terms of leaning towards the corporate world whereas Stanford, Berkeley and Sloan probably veer startup.

    Will be interesting to see whether recent spike of interest in entrepreneurship inversely tracks the health of the job market moving forward.

    When is your blog starting up?!

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