As I sit down to write this, I am a bit more than halfway through my MBA experience. As such, I wanted to take some time to reflect on my thoughts on the experience so far. Both to capture a snapshot of my feelings at a moment in time as well as to hopefully serve as a helpful data point to anyone who may be asking themselves “Should I get an MBA?” I think this sort of reflection is important with any big decisions, but doing so halfway through my MBA is especially meaningful given just how different the two years are turning out to be. I plan to also revisit my MBA experience post-graduation as well as hopefully a few years down the road to see how my thinking has evolved given the outcome of my final year and some additional time to let the experience breathe.

Let’s jump in.

Why I’m getting an MBA

To review this properly I need to start at the beginning of why I am pursuing an MBA in the first place. I have written about my motivations in-depth previously, but I will summarize them here:

First, and probably least outwardly applicable to any readers, is the fact that my dad went to Wharton and for as long as I can remember it has been something I have always wanted to do too. Growing up I saw the impact that a Wharton MBA had on my dad’s career and I listened as my parents talked about what had been a supremely formative experience on their careers and relationships. I sometimes joke in my family that growing up, I had no idea where I wanted to go for undergrad but I always knew where I wanted to go for grad school. Writing this motivation out, I am struck by how easy it is for us to sometimes forget how badly and for how long we wanted something once we get it. School has been such a whirlwind in so many ways that it can be easy to forget that every moment spent here is a little moment of triumph from the achievement of a lifelong goal. And that is nice. The fleeting joys of achievement is a bigger topic for another day, but I think it’s sufficient for the purposes of this post to say that going to the same school my dad did really has been special. Having my parents visit and walking around campus hearing stories from their time and how much Philadelphia has was changed will be something I never forget and I find a lot of significance in this bridge between both of our stories.

Okay, now on to the stuff that is probably a bit more relevant for you.

Outside of it just being a personal goal of mine, there are a few other major reasons I wanted to get my MBA and to get it from a place like Wharton.

In my prior post about my motivations for getting my MBA, I landed on three major driving reasons.

To build my network
To learn as much as I absolutely can
To build my (internal & external) resume

In order to properly reflect on each of these and whether the experience has lived up to my expectations, I think it would be helpful to break these larger themes into their composite parts and address each of them in turn. We will use these reasons as our success criteria as I attempt in this post and subsequent others down the years to evaluate whether I was right to get my MBA and which aspects of the experience I found most valuable:

Building my professional network
Building my personal network
Academics
Personal Growth
Prestige
Career Acceleration

Professional Network

I am thoroughly impressed by my fellow classmates. But maybe not for the reasons you might think. I think improving your professional network is a big reason why many people pursue their MBAs. Sometimes you hear people describe their MBA experience and say something like “everyone I am in class with is so amazing and inspiring! I don’t know how I got in!” There are two things wrong with this statement. First, it is without a doubt a not so subtly veiled humble brag (everyone who gets in here is so impressive -> therefore by the transitive property I too must be impressive). Second, it sets some pretty unrealistic expectations. I don’t walk around campus bumping into people who have cured diseases or started companies that have changed the world or patented technology that helps baby rhinoceros (rhinoceri?) survive in arctic climates (at least if I do go to school with those kind of people they steer far clear of me). My classmates are all smart and they have worked hard to get to this point but they are largely normal people. Just like me. And to be perfectly honest, I take a lot of comfort in that! Maybe I am just lacking for confidence but if everyone in my classes were mini Elons and Jobs I’d probably feel pretty out of place. The truth is that the people who have already changed the world probably aren’t going to business school, and you may disagree with me on this, but I honestly believe that we would be better off if more of the people changing the world did. No, I am not inspired as much by my classmates’ professional accolades. What impresses me is the kind of people they are. With small exceptions, my classmates are kind, inclusive, smart, ethical, and hard-working. They got to Wharton by making long-term plans and executing on them. Some of them stepped away from high-prestige, high-paying jobs in order to better themselves. And I think that is all pretty damn cool if you ask me. My classmates come from a vast array of different backgrounds. Some of them have been leaders. Many of them don’t come from “business” backgrounds. Some of them are genuine examples that the American Dream is alive and well. A few of them are honestly kinda pretentious jerks. But the vast majority of them are good people and I couldn’t be happier to have them as my peers as I continue forward in my career.

Personal Network

Outside of your professional network, I think building out your personal network is a huge benefit of getting your MBA. There aren’t many opportunities in life to meet and build genuine relationships with such a large number of peers. And a huge part of the secret sauce is that everyone being thrown into the mixer is highly motivated to meet and get to know one another. I honestly doubt there is a period in most people’s lives where making friends is easier. Now that isn’t to say it is always easy or streamlined. Between covid (more on that topic later) and some family commitments it didn’t feel like my wife and I really got settled socially until the spring of our first year. There were times early on where we were anxious that we hadn’t made the amount of deep, genuine relationships that we had hoped for. But we eventually found our tribe and it seems like just about everyone else did as well. Two pieces of advice for people. First, give it time. Genuine relationships don’t happen overnight but if you put yourself out there you will find your people. Second, go first. Be the one to invite someone to coffee. Be the one to invite people over for dinner or to organize an activity. Everyone else is probably just as worried about making friends as you are and it is a huge relief when someone else tries to include them.

I think the modern MBA can really be an opportunity to find people to journey through life with. And I am happy to report that I am 100% sure that many of the friendships my wife and I have made will last a lifetime. In some ways, that is probably worth the cost of admission alone.

Academics

Based on my experience, this category is not at the top of many MBA’s priority lists. And it probably shouldn’t be! One of the interesting things about grad school is that everyone is here for different reasons. And that is a good thing! For me, Academics aren’t my top priority, but learning is. After I graduated undergrad, I really missed the academic environment and I felt like I hadn’t really appreciated what I had till it was gone. I loved the learning and the discussions and the semi-structured way of living. I swore to myself that if I ever had the opportunity to be in the academic environment again I would really try to make the most of it. And I think I have been relatively successful in that. There are definitely times where I want to do something fun and instead, I am doing some busy work for a class where it is easy to forget my vow to appreciate school. But largely my experience has been that the more you put into your classwork the more you get out of it (intuitive but not always obvious). I think if I am being perfectly honest, my academic experience has been something of a mixed bag. I would say I have largely been pleased with most of my classes and professors. There have been a few stinkers where I felt like I was wasting my time, but I think the coursework has been pretty engaging for the most part. This is definitely partially being colored by the first couple of months of my second year. I really focused on knocking out my core requirements in my first year. I still enjoyed most of the classes, but the opportunity to take more elective classes based on my interests has definitely increased the average quality of the enjoyment and the applicability of the learning I am getting from each class (with one notable exception COUGHcomputationalstatisticalanalysisinrCOUGH).

For anyone interested in pursuing their MBA, the pedagogical structure is an interesting point of comparison between MBA programs and ranges from some schools where everyone takes all the same courses their first year to Wharton which is probably the most flexible in terms of what classes you can take to fulfill your requirements. It is hard to say which is best since I have only experienced Wharton’s “Choose-your-own-adventure” structure. I think the answer to what is the best structure probably depends on what your focus is. The more defined structure from places like HBS or Darden definitely seems to have the benefit of really creating strong bonds between your cohort (or whatever those schools call it). The downside of this is that, especially if you have a business background, you will probably be stuck taking some classes with material you are already familiar and it could feel like a waste of time. The benefit for structures similar to Wharton is the inverse. You have more flexibility to make sure that you are getting the most out of your limited window of time and not taking classes that are auxiliary or overly repetitive. The downside is that you probably don’t develop quite as tight bonds with your cohort since you are only taking a couple of classes with them instead of a whole year’s worth. I got really lucky and my cohort was unusually tight with one another, but I don’t think all the cohorts at Wharton had that same experience. Covid probably didn’t help.

I will address it head-on later, but it is impossible to discuss academics without mentioning covid. This year, our classes are fully in-person and the difference is pretty much night and day. I enjoyed many of my classes last year, but there is a nearly uniform step-function positive difference to having teaching in-person. The professors are more up for it, my fellow students are more engaged, the lectures are more interesting, it is easier to follow along, harder to get distracted. There is one class I prefer watching the recordings of (Intro to Computer Programming) so I can pause and rewind when I inevitably get confused and have to rewatch an explanation, but largely classes are vastly improved in-person.

The one area where I have been slightly disappointed with the academic side of the experience is just how much of a low priority it is for many of my fellow classmates. It’s fine that it isn’t everyone’s number one priority (again. it isn’t mine either), but there have definitely been times where my fellow classmates’ lack of engagement had a deleterious impact on my own experience. There are few things I enjoy more than a lively and vibrant discussion and it kinda sucks when it is clear that others aren’t prepared/engaged. I hope this doesn’t come across as holier than thou. There have definitely been times where I skipped a reading or turned in an assignment half-done because I was prioritizing something else (honestly I think I probably don’t do this enough given what my priority stack for Wharton is), but I do wish my fellow students would turn up the “student” knob at times ever so slightly. (I should note that this is definitely an area that has improved with being in person but this is supposed to mostly be a review of my first year so 🤷‍♂️)

Personal Growth

Perhaps the most pleasant surprise of the whole MBA experience is the personal growth I feel like I have gone through during my time in the program. It isn’t often talked about as a selling point for pursuing a graduate degree, but if I look at the value of the MBA so far, the amount of personal growth I have had is probably the number two most valuable category under the personal relationships I have built. I feel like I have grown as much in the past ~year as I have in the rest of my years of adulthood combined. The MBA really is relatively unique in that it is a time to take a step back from the hand-to-hand combat of everyday working life. To take a breath. To ask yourself big questions and grapple with what the answers mean for how you want to live your life. I struggle to think of one other time in life where you can take a step back from the rigmarole of life and not only have that not count against you but you are actually rewarded for doing so!

I have referenced it in other posts, but the past year has been pretty transformational in terms of what my priorities are and how I am orienting my life around them. And I am not sure that I would’ve been able to work through what I needed to in order to get to where I am today if I wasn’t getting my MBA. When you are working full time it is really hard to do anything but execute on what is urgent. I salute those of you who are able to work on your side project after work and travel on the weekends but I have never been able to do much more than spend time with my wife, walk my dog, try to exercise a little, watch some TV together, and occasionally string together a semi-coherent blog post. A great part of the whole MBA experience is that the application process itself actually gets the ball rolling on asking yourself some pretty big questions, but too many seem to drop their progress as soon as they get to school and the custome party circuit begins.

Maybe this is just me being overly self-analytical and other people simply haven’t experienced the kind of growth I am talking about or they are better equipped to do so during normal life and don’t need to wait until a water break like I did. Maybe I simply had more growing up to do than my classmates. Maybe people are simply unwilling to really sit and grapple with tough questions. It sure isn’t always easy or pleasant. Whatever the case, I think the personal growth you can do during your two years is one of the most underrated benefits of getting an MBA. And if any of my classmates haven’t taken the time to be intentional about pursuing that kind of work I would really encourage them to not let our final year slip by without doing so.

Prestige

This isn’t super comfortable to talk about, but I feel like I would be disingenuous if I didn’t at least mention the factor that prestige plays in the MBA experience. In some ways, this is more an input of which MBA program you attend versus the decision to attend an MBA program as a whole. If I am being completely honest with myself and open with you, I have got to admit that the prestige of getting my MBA from a school like Wharton did play a role in my decision criteria. And as uncomfortable as it can be to say something out loud, I don’t think it necessarily is bad or wrong. Prestige matters. We may not like it, but it does. I have felt like I didn’t really have a “gold stamp of approval” yet in my professional life and I thought going to a school like Wharton could fill that gap. I thought it would open doors for me and that people would use my degree, at least partially, as a proxy for my talent.

And so far, the initial indications are that I was correct in my thinking. Now how much it matters is a topic for another day and probably depends on a variety of factors (industry especially). But I think it is pretty hard to say it doesn’t matter at all. When I tell people I go to Wharton, I can tell they look at me differently. Sometimes that difference may be for my benefit and other times it may be to my detriment, but there generally is a difference all the same.

Now the one thing I will close with on this topic is that while I do think prestige matters, I don’t think it matters THAT much. No amount of attending a prestigious program will offset your actual capabilities or hard work, but I do think it probably can augment them.

Career Acceleration

Probably the biggest reason why people get their MBAs is for the acceleration/pivot point that it can play for their career. At this point where I am not 100% sure what I will be doing post-graduation, it is also probably the hardest category for me to really rate with any degree of confidence. What I can say is that it really does serve as an excellent way to pivot your career. I came to school because I wanted to pivot from being on the investing side of the technology world to being on the operating side. My career north star is that I want to be part of building businesses that create an impact by solving important problems for people. I didn’t feel like I was doing that as an investor and the MBA presented me with an opportunity to pivot into a more hands-on role in the building process. To a degree, the proof will be in the pudding depending on where I land post-graduation, but so far so good. I interned in an operational role for a startup my whole first year and then I got exposure to both operations and product work during my summer internship. Both of these have been really great experiences and have allowed me to show at least the initial indications of a skill-set in some of these areas.

One of the things I struggled with last year was my struggle to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life and my eventual conclusion that the answer is really only ever understood in hindsight and that career pathing is much more of an iterative process than a pre-scripted one. For others who take this more experimental approach to career pathing, the MBA is a perfect sandbox. It allows you to develop hypotheses around what you want to do and then actually go and test them in a low-stakes way either through classes or internships. This is massively valuable, both for the hypothesis you confirm and (perhaps even more so) for those whose conclusions surprise you.

COVID

The 800-lb gorilla in the room. It is pretty hard to talk through the first half of my MBA experience without discussing the impact Covid-19 has had on it. A few thoughts:

My first year was quite a bit different than the first-year MBA experience in years past or even this year. All of our classes were virtual and there were no officially sanctioned, in-person, social activities of any kind. Most of our social outlets my first year were coffee chats and small group dinners. In many ways, this stunk. We weren’t able to participate in any of the annual traditions that accompany most Wharton students’ first year. It was harder to make friends and the quality of the class experience was inevitably diminished. But it wasn’t all bad.

The way I like to talk about it is that it seems to me like the MBA experience under normal circumstances is a bit like an amusement park ride. You must pass certain criteria to get on but then once you are on, you sorta are just whisked on your way, with networking, academic enrichment, and professional achievement in some ways being the default for showing up.

That was not the case last year. My wife and I had an awesome experience. As did many of my classmates. But that is because we were intentional about willing that experience into existence. It did not just happen on its own like I expected and my guess is that this review would not be nearly as positive as it is if I hadn’t been in Philadelphia or if I hadn’t been as proactive while I was here.

Do I think Wharton did a good job in handling the pandemic? No. The administration clearly cared more about covering their own asses than they cared about treating their students like adults. They did little to foster anything resembling a sense of community and actively stymied it when given the chance. They hid behind the veil of trying to keep everyone safe while making nonsensical policies that had little logical or scientific basis. They accepted their largest class on record without making any cuts to tuition and then, with their all-time greatest tuition revenue in the bank, proceeded to make constant cuts to the student (and ESPECIALLY the partner or “non-tuition-paying-members-of-the-community” in their parlance) experience. They refused to dip into their multi-billion dollar endowment to alleviate some of these challenges and in doing so dispelled any possible justification of these unfathomably large investment vehicles being anything that resembles a “rainy day fund” for the institution.

The actions of the school over the past year serve as a stark reminder that just because Wharton is, among if not, the best business school in the world, does not mean that it is in any way, shape, or form run like a business. Students are not treated as customers and they are barely even treated as stakeholders. I am sure the administrators and leaders of the school think they care about students, but their almost militant willingness to adopt a strategy of “wait them out, they are only here for two years” speaks otherwise. With all of that said, I doubt any MBA over the past two years would have glowing things to say about how their school handled the COVID-19 pandemic. Does that excuse their behavior? Not in my humble opinion. I wish the school had created realistic guidelines that students could abide within instead of creating these completely illogical and unrealistic rules which only succeeded in driving social events underground (and inside), thereby making them more exclusionary and less safe.

Now Covid’s impact on the MBA experience wasn’t all bad. Virtual class afforded a certain amount of flexibility for those students who wanted/were able to take advantage of it. I also think the modality of making social connections in smaller groups had some distinct benefits over the usual shouting to each other over the cacophony of packed night-club parties.

As much as I am enjoying this year, it is honestly exhausting. It is awesome and I am loving it, but I constantly feel tired and that I am being pulled in 10 different directions at once (part of the cause of my infrequent blog posts). I struggle to imagine keeping up this pace for two whole years. I also think there is something to be said about how different my two years will be and the stark contrast they will live in my memory with compared to the average MBA student under more normal times.

Conclusion

I am really happy with my MBA experience so far. Parts of it haven’t been what I expected, both for good and ill. Parts have been hard and stressful. But I feel like I have gotten a ton out of the experience and I am really glad I decided to pursue it. We will see how much, if at all, that changes as I finish up my final year and figure out what I will be doing post-graduation.

I hope this semi-coherent rant was informative and maybe even a little bit helpful. A lot of the value I get from writing is that it helps clarify my thoughts on a subject and this was definitely a helpful exercise in that regard. Until next time.

Journey before destination.

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