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| Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management |
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1999 Profile Update School Profile School Statistics Graduates' Comments: Students are very competitive, very grade-conscious, and work too hard compared to other ranked schools. If you've never been in investment banking, it's hard to gain employment in the industry. Location! Location! Location! Owen is simply not the place to go if you are switching careers into I-banking. I must stress, however, that if you have prior industry experience it's actually a breeze. Overall, Owen is a good, well-structured program. It has the best library in the world and a lot of country music. --Finance Owen's health-care emphasis is a great asset since it is located in Nashville. We heard many CEOs of health-care companies share their perspectives on the industry.--Consulting At Owen I have been able to learn more about multiple aspects of business management, from finance and human resource management on the Owen side to regional politics, history, and culture on the Latin American studies side. The MBA/MA dual degree has prepared me well for a career in international management consulting. The value of this education manifested itself in the intense interest recruiters expressed during interviews. The program allowed me to combine my most passionate interests, and I hope that Vanderbilt gains recognition for this quality program. --Consulting As an entrepreneur who started and ran my own business during B-school, I appreciated the depth as well as the breadth of the curriculum. Through the diverse course offerings, often taught by "real world" experts, my management education was highly tailored to my unique needs -- indeed I was able to design my own concentration. Today, my business is up and running, and I truly believe that Owen's combination of skilled faculty and unique array of classes, which were designed with real-world application in mind, will provide that critical "edge" needed to succeed in our highly competitive market.--Entrepreneurship The Owen finance education is second to none in my opinion. Having worked on Wall Street for five years prior to B-school, I knew what I wanted to learn during these two years. In particular, I was looking for a solid statistics foundation and an opportunity to learn advanced finance applications to price cutting-edge derivative products and to solve financial engineering problems. All of my expectations were exceeded at Owen. The finance faculty, the curriculum, and the student body are all top-notch. --Finance Our finance department is exceptional as the faculty members are on the leading edge of finance and are extremely effective in bringing their knowledge into the classroom for student learning. Hans Stoll is an excellent professor in the microstructure of markets and derivatives with firsthand experience in the market. Ron Masulis has superior knowledge of capital structure and company valuation. His corporate valuation management class was one of the most beneficial classes at Owen. Bill Christie's teaching has rated him the best teacher the past two years. --Finance The Service Marketing emphasis, head by Professor Roland Rust, is a leading source for new ideas on how to quantify and enhance customer expectations and satisfaction. Also, Professors Hoffman and Novak have created one of the most respected Internet marketing departments around. --Marketing Not only does the school excel in finance and accounting, but also in marketing and information technology. The administration exerts effort to increase the diversity of the student body. Placement is first-class as we were in contact with every investment bank of material size. The classes are small, and the professors are active in our education. --Finance The electronic-commerce program at Owen is the ideal MBA curriculum for the next millennium. While other MBA programs are just talking about how the Internet is changing business, Owen is actively adapting its curriculum to this new information technology paradigm. In addition to simply offering an emphasis in electronic commerce, Owen has recruited visionary professors to teach MBA students the latest theories in electronic commerce. It was not unusual for a course syllabus to change daily as new information became available about the trends in electronic commerce. --Marketing After "comparing notes" with students from dozens of other B-schools, I believe that Owen is among the technologically elite. In my two years here, I've seen mammoth investment in computer systems and witnessed professors rapidly adopt and advocate full utilization of the tech resources. From the student side, courses in Electronic Commerce/Marketing are the first to be filled. --Marketing Owen's commitment to technology, telecommunications, and electronic commerce not only made it the program of choice for me but also set it apart from other leading graduate business programs. --Consulting The reason I chose Vanderbilt was the quality of the people. I know more than 10 of my professors on a first-name basis, and eat lunch with them all the time. No other program offered me that. The library is excellent. The dean has made a dramatic change and now is more open to student concerns. --Finance The facutly is always available outside of class, and most professors will give out their home phone numbers. In addition they seemed to take a real interest in my personal development (what was going on with my job search, ways they could help, etc.). As the first class to complete both years under the new module (quarter) system, I found the administration very receptive to our suggestions for improvement. We had a few bumps in the road our first year, but the student government, administration, and faculty worked together to fix what was wrong and make the program even better for the incoming class. There is a great balance here between working hard and having fun. "Kegs in the Courtyard" every Thursday is a great tradition and a fantastic way to finish off a tough week. Nashville is a super city. Its not just country music anymore! I liked it so much here that I targeted my job search to the area and will be staying here after graduation. --Marketing Owen is a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. It is a broadly mediocre program, suffering most conspicuously from weak leadership. A vision above remaining in the "top 25" and emulating more esteemed programs would benefit Owen greatly. There are several niches aching to develop, including electronic commerce and health-care management. However, they are receiving lackluster support relative to finance and operations, for example. Owen's dean is a second-rate manager and academician. He is out of touch with the knowledge and practices in the vanguard and is a technophobe to boot. A more vivacious, inventive steward, especially from the private sector, could better exploit and expand Owen's potential. --No career path given Owen's is an extremely diverse, team-oriented environment that not only gives one skills to manage, but confidence as well. The caliber of students is very high. They might have less work experience compared to Harvard students, but the minds are as bright and the energy extremely high. I know from many discussions with friends at Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Columbia, NYU, and UC Berkeley that I had a very special experience compared to the laissez-faire attitudes and environments of other programs. --Finance While I don't have a true frame of reference for comparison, in my humble opinion, our Dean, Marty Geisel, left much to be desired in a Dean. He claimed that his primary responsibility was to raise money from alumni students, but his demonstrated poor interpersonal skills cause me to be skeptical about his successes there. The Assistant Dean, while a talented organizer and teacher, also lacked the capacity to complete some of her job requirements. She apparently had responsibility over student concerns, and I found her completely unresponsive in several instances (both my own and several experiences classmates shared with me). She displayed a callous lack of sensitivity for issues students found extremely important and I consider this a travesty. I also think the administration has done a poor job with public relations, although they barely responded when criticized in a student's article. --Consulting Kelly Christie, the registrar, is the most capable person I've met in academia. --Finance Working a legitimate job in finance before attending Owen, I increased my income 6 1/2 fold. No other business school could have helped me accomplish that. Owen taught the perfect mix of academic theory and real world application, enabling me to impress my interviewers and take control of my future. The strong efforts by the career placement office in attracting new companies on campus only served to facilitate my job search. The people who believe Owen's alumni network is weak don't understand that you don't need 200 alums with a company to receive a job offer. Even so, Owen alums overcompensated with added enthusiasm and effort. One alum whom I'd never met offered to meet me at the airport. Another asked if I needed to spend the night at his guest house to save money during a self-financed recruiting trip. Can you imagine at any other school calling an alum you've never met and hearing him say, "the keys will be under the mat?" The enthusiasm at Owen is contagious from the first day. The faculty and staff are there to serve the students in every manner possible. So many students seeking a career change walk the halls with so much confidence because they know the school will deliver, and it absolutely does. --Marketing The alumni network was extremely helpful in giving me advice. I networked in New York City and landed a great job on Wall Street through the great advice I received from alumni. --No career path given After seven years of work as an entrepreneur in the non-profit and public sectors, I needed to find a way to both enhance my skills and provide a transition into the for-profit sector. My MBA at Vanderbilt was the answer, and I couldn't be more pleased. My starting salary (just the base) will be about two-and-a-half times higher than it was when I entered, and I'm transitioning into an entire new industry, health-care management, that I hardly even knew about when I entered school two years ago. --Operations The placement office is fabulous (I got my job through their efforts.) The operations curriculum is extensive, and the ops faculty is extremely dedicated to providing students with up-to-date electives. --Operations Within a month of beginning classes, the Director and Assistant Director of Placement (Peter Veruki and Wendy Archuleta) knew my name, and knew exactly what industry I wanted to work in, what job I wanted, and the city I wanted to go to. Well before beginning my search for an internship or job, the placement office had given me the names, phone numbers and E-mail addresses of dozens of Vanderbilt alums that were working or used to work in corporate finance in different high-tech arenas. Each alum I contacted was extremely helpful and willing to offer their time to me. Ultimately, I got the city of my choice (Chicago), the job of my choice, the industry of my choice, and a salary that is more than double that of my pre-MBA salary. And the recruiters that hired me said that I was one of their most attractive recruits specifically because I went to the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt. Our professors may write the most difficult exams I have ever seen, and they certainly are on the cutting edge of research (especially finance, marketing, and electronic commerce), but more impressively, they are friendly, approachable people who have a gift for explaining the toughest material in the most understandable language. Their presentations and lectures are interesting, relevant, interactive, and very educational. With their "open-door" office policy, they strike a wonderful balance between research and teaching. --Information Technology Owen has really improved in the last two years. The number and quality of companies coming to the school increased and the relationship with faculty and staff has improved a lot. Dean Geisel has shown incredible leadership in promoting changes for the benefit of the students. There are more social activities for the students, more speakers, and more opportunities to offer suggestions. Also, the international diversity is great. There are people from more than 30 countries, which increases the learning of world issues. --Finance The MBA at Vanderbilt has excellent teachers, always at the leading edge of their fields. The program has a very diverse community of international students that provides different points of view and enhances the traditional learning process. Being an international student myself, I profited from being in a different environment than my home country. --Finance Owen offers a great opportunity for students to initiate or get involved in a number of extracurricular activities that considerably enhance managerial experience. The school is very supportive to every association or club that brings to the table a proposal that will contribute to the learning experience of the Owen community. This is particularly true in the International Business arena. The modular system provides great versatility when choosing electives. It allows students to concentrate in specific areas and still be able to get a well-rounded profile as a manager. --Consulting The recruiters coming to campus were all top-caliber and covered a wide range of industries, such as Investment Banking, Consulting, Brand Management, and Health Care (especially strong in Nashville). Due to the small class size, you are virtually assured to get an interview with any company that comes to campus as long as you show interest up front. And I found that companies that do not come to campus are very receptive to Owen candidates and are very familiar with Owen's rapidly improving curriculum. --Consulting Back to Top 1999 Profile Update School Profile School Statistics |
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