Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Forte Forum - The MBA Proposition

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Forte Forum - the MBA Proposition. Before I even started my undergrad, I knew I wanted to get a MBA. I signed up for the event on a whim. I guess Forte Foundation got my information from a women's business conference I had attended, so once I received the e-mail, I went ahead and looked it up. Turns out the event was only two days away, but seemed pretty decent as the admission fee was only $10 and seemed to have a good structure for gaining information. It's always better to start early, so I went ahead and paid the $10 and put it on my schedule.

I got to the event about fifteen minutes after it started and headed to the first table for the school I knew the most about - Washington University's Olin School of Business. First off, why Olin? My parents moved to Saint Louis a few years ago, and left me behind in the South :( At the point they moved, I was half way done with my undergrad and had a pretty sweet deal (I paid $0 for my tuition) so I stayed. Aside from being in Saint Louis, Olin is BEAUTIFUL and is a very good school. Albeit expensive, but it seems all business schools are. However, I have been saving up for a while now and have a small (but hey! It's something) amount saved up. I was really impressed with their representative. Although he was a male at a female event, he was super friendly and dynamic. He gave me a really good feeling about the program and the kind of people that work for the school. After attending my undergrad, I realized how important it is to have a dynamic staff. I realize now I should have done more research beforehand, but the rep was great at answering any questions and giving me general information to start my MBA quest. After talking to him, I felt confident to talk to the other schools.

I then talked to the rep from U of Illinois - Urbana-Champagne. Again, close to Saint Louis but also close to Chicago. My uncle (who is a professor) really looks highly on this school, so that counts a lot in my opinion. For this representative, I should have been more prepared, but I did grab some materials and have paged through them. Need to follow up with more research.

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