B-School Life December 21, 2008, 8:20PM EST

How I Got to Anderson

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Now fast-forward past the inevitable anxiety produced by waiting for an answer, which came to me most intensely while driving on one of Los Angeles' murderous freeways, to the last day of a two-week orientation. The fall core professors visited our classrooms, one by one, to introduce themselves, make clear the objectives of the course, and, on some occasions, deliver homework assignments due in three days time.

At UCLA Anderson, classes begin several weeks after most other programs, at the tail end of September. The school operates on a quarter system, so courses are 10-weeks long, except for two five-week courses that must be completed during the first-year's fall quarter alongside three regular classes for a total of 20 units. Such an intense schedule makes for an immediate test of a student's time-management skills. Among the courses I'm taking this quarter, I have already completed two (Leadership Foundations and Marketing Management), and I am just past the first half of the first quarter. The remaining courses, all part of the core program, are: Data and Decisions (Business Statistics), Financial Accounting, Managerial Economics, and Financial Markets.

Forget a Personal Life

The case-based approach to teaching has thus far only surfaced in the Leadership course and, most prominently, in Marketing. The first term offers an intensive beginning, even without taking into account club- and career-placement initiatives. Personal lives get shoved aside, at least for the first quarter.

In the final two quarters of the first year, the remaining core courses are completed, except for a field study course during the second year. This project lasts two consecutive quarters and represents a focused opportunity to a team of self-selected MBA candidates, advised by a faculty member, to place newly acquired management skills in consulting with a real-life company/organization. Some other core courses include: Corporate Finance, Business Strategy, and Managing & Leading Organizations. Elective courses make up part of the first year during the second and third quarters and almost all of the second year. To learn more about the Applied Management Research (AMR) project or the Core course program, visit UCLA Anderson at: www.anderson.ucla.edu.

Team learning holds a special importance in the strategy of UCLA Anderson. The Student Services Office each quarter creates new student study groups required to work together in all the core courses (except AMR). This quarter, my student team includes two women and two other men. Of these, two are foreign-born and one is a joint-degree student (JD/MBA). Our work experience is as varied as our characters. Overall, tackling homework as a group shows us how to learn to work equally well with people we like and people we like a little less.

Alejandro Tinajero is a member of the UCLA Anderson full-time MBA class of 2010.