Although I haven't made much progress on the before school TODO list, I decided tonight was the night I would take the CareerLeader.com assessment tests.

According to the CareerLeader site, here's the purpose:

CareerLeader is an integrated approach to business career self-assessment. Developed by Drs. Timothy Butler (Director of Career Development Programs at the Harvard Business School) and James Waldroop of Peregrine Partners, CareerLeader is used by over 260 top business schools and corporations worldwide to help guide their students' and employees' careers.

After about an hour of answering questions about what kinds of jobs I would like, what kind of environments I like to work in, and what kinds of rewards do I find...rewarding(?) the system developed a bunch of reports and opinions about me.

Interestingly, it seemed to have me pegged for someone who would enjoy general management and entrepreneurship. I would say both of those functional areas are certainly of interest to me, so maybe this tool knows what it is talking about!

The best thing about it, however, is that there is a venue for anonymous 360 degree feedback so you can have current and former coworkers come in and rate you anonymously. This is an area that unfortunately I haven't had the chance to participate in thus far in my career. I picked a good mix of people who report to me, my boss, and those who I work with but are not in my reporting structure. Once four or more people respond, I will get to see the 360 degree feedback. I'm looking forward to it!

Last night I attended the new admit event at Columbia. It was held in the Low Library and has a nice open bar with some great canapes (I _love_ canapes...just ask my wife). Linda Meehan, Director of Admissions, spoke briefly as did Dean Glenn Hubbard, but mostly it was alot of socializing with alums, new admits, current students, and professors. I was happy with the spread of experiences and lifestages of the class as well. We had your typical 'business-y' folks who worked in banking, hedge funds, trading, etc but also had some non traditional folks (like the guy who runs a surfwear clothing company and was a gallery artist prior to coming to school) which was cool to see. Everyone was down to earth and there were a bunch of folks who were married as well, which was good to see (I'm not the only one!).

One more post for the day...

My man Marquis (I worked with him at my first job out of college) has a blog that he used to chronicle his applicant experiences and then student experiences at Stanford GSB. It is awesome, very detailed, and worth checking out if you are an applicant or even a current student. You can get it at http://marquisweblog.blogspot.com/ !

So far I have been pleasantly surprised by the student loan application process. Everything was web based so far, and through Citibank I was pre-approved for my loan. I just received some postal and email regarding next steps (which I need to follow up on!) but it is ALOT easier than my undergrad days when everything was paper-based (although admittedly my Dad filled out all the forms for me!)

My philosophy on borrowing is to borrow tutition and then finance living expenses out of my savings. I haven't been on a fixed income in 7 years or so, so I think it may take some getting used to. Although I save, I am not much of a budgeter! Anyways, its only for 16 months, then I'll be working again.

Although this blog will be focused on MBA-related stuff, and fairly specific to Columbia's program, I wanted to share a cool Internet video player/aggregator called Democracy that I just became aware of through one of my favor techy-geek sites, Slashdot.

Democracy basically builds channels of video from various video sites, BitTorrent, etc and then allows you to search and download them. Right now I'm looking at some of the videos categorized as 'media' (lots of politcally/socially tinged stuff). Check it out!

It's final, I am working until the end of the year and then starting school just a few days later on January 3. Although I would have liked to leave sooner to get some R&R, financial considerations and the chance to achieve some additional career goals has kept me put.

I have made some good progress on the checklist that CBS provides to us, and I'm set up on the email system already, which is nice.

I just took a look at our first assignment for IBS (Individual, Business,and Society) which is to draft a 1-pager on an ethical dilemma we faced at work where our values were at odds with that of the company. We need to submit it before the start of classes.

I also signed up for exemption exams. I am going to take the Marketing Strat, Management, and Stat exams since I have either taken a course (Stat), or had experience in other areas. Originally I was not planning on taking any exemption exams since the school does not recommend it for those who have not had significant coursework in the area. However, I spoke to a second year who was pretty convinced that it made sense to take as many as you could. After all, even if you pass the exam, you can still opt to take the course! So I figured what the heck....