MBA Journal: Introduction October 21, 2007, 10:06PM EST

The Right Time for Business School

Darden first-year Scott Clemente rejected the idea of B-school several times. What finally changed his mind?

Story Tools

It's pouring rain outside. I am standing at a bar in Charlottesville, Va., having just ordered a round of beers for me and three of my new friends. As I wait for the bartender to pour the drinks I look over my left shoulder and see a person dressed in a gorilla suit. Over my right shoulder there is a guy dressed in a cheerleader outfit. I can only hope that each lost some type of bet. The bartender slides the four beers over and tells me the bill is four dollars. I ask her to repeat herself, sure that I misheard her. "Four dollars," she confirms.

Ahhh…college towns. I didn't realize how much I had forgotten about the characters, the scene, and yes, the cheap beer.

You see, since leaving college as an undergrad 10 years ago, I never considered going back for my MBA. A year after graduating I was working for Goldman Sachs (GS) in Chicago as a financial analyst. I spent two years there, showing up for work at 6 a.m. and working until 7 or 8 o'clock each night. I loved it. I learned everything from portfolio management to single stock arbitrage and had the opportunity to work with (and learn from) clients who represented some of the most successful businesspeople in the country.

Towards the end of my two-year program, my boss brought up the idea of business school. He had gone many years ago and thought it was the perfect next step in my career. I politely listened, but at the time I had an offer from Goldman to be a third-year analyst in London. I had learned an incredible amount over the previous two years and was confident that the "on the job" experience I would get in London would vastly exceed anything I could learn in business school. To my mind, real world knowledge would always trump anything in textbooks.

Same Job, Different Country

So several months later I landed at Heathrow Airport for a year in London. There I worked on a trading floor with people from all over Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. On trips to the copier or to get a coffee I overheard conversations in no less than eight languages. There was only one problem. Although the scenery was different, my job was basically the same, and I wasn't learning anything new.

I began to look around for other areas that interested me. Through conversations with colleagues and friends in London, I started looking at the world of private equity. During this search I was again presented with the idea of going back to business school and moving into private equity afterwards. Again, I politely listened and then quickly dismissed the idea.

I interviewed with a former Goldman executive who ran his own private equity firm in London. He offered me a job and I decided to leave Goldman and travel for a couple of months before starting on this next stage of my career. It was the last week of August, 2001. A couple of weeks later, two planes crashed into the World Trade Center. The world changed, and my new job got caught up in it—disappearing along with the financial liquidity of my new company. My grand career plans had come to a sudden and painful stop.

Roman Holiday

In the aftermath of September 11, absolutely no one was hiring. So I took the opportunity to check off some things that had been on my life list of things to do: I went to Tanzania and climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro; I traveled to Cuba for a week; I moved to Italy and learned Italian.

My time off gave me new energy to pursue my career goals, and through some old contacts in London, I was able to find a job in Rome with Morgan Stanley's (MS) real estate group. My career was back on track. Unfortunately, I was there on a temporary work visa, and at that time permanent visas for non-European workers were hard to come by. Once my temporary permit expired, I was forced to leave. Derailed again.