huibert-aalbers.com
My home away from home
It’s finally over
About two years ago, on a Friday evening, one of the managers in my team asked me about the possibility to pursue an MBA. This is something that IBM will usually pay for their top talent employees, so I went to HR to ask about the deadline to submit requests. It turned out that the deadline was that very same day and that they had forgotten to notify me. My HR partner sent me a form, which I forwarded to the employee who had asked for it. Since I couldn’t leave the office because I had to wait for him to complete the form, I took a look at the different options that were available. The Executive MBA program at IPADE, which ranked among the best in LA, seemed interesting because it focused on people management, which is a set of important skills techies like myself usually don’t develop naturally . So, without spending too much time thinking about it, I decided to also submit my application.
A couple of days later, IBM’s local education board approved my application and the very next day I had an interview with the head of the program, as the selection process was already well under way. One day later, I passed the admission exam. Now that I think about it, since I had never attended a private school (public schools in Europe were very good back when I studied there), I honestly thought this was just a minor requirement and that anyone willing to pay the ridiculous tuition costs, would be automatically accepted. So, I wasn’t really surprised when I got my acceptance letter. I later learned that 9 in 10 candidates were turned down. That is when I realized that I had been extremely fortunate to be accepted and that I had to take this endeavor extremely seriously.
The fact is that this MBA program didn’t really seem that hard to me, but you certainly need to commit to it. You need to spend many hours a week reading and preparing cases. The school warns you, but I think that it is fair to say that nobody I spoke to realized the level of personal investment required to complete the degree, including my wife.
The Executive MBA program (MEDEX) was, in many ways, a refresher of my undergraduate degree in Economics. I feel that students who had law or engineering degrees had a much harder time than I did. For them, learning basic Economics and Accounting in a short amount of time was a real challenge. There were however, many new things I learned during these two years, and I must say that I really enjoyed most of the sessions.
One thing that the school should have told me is that in order to get my degree I had to present a recent birth certificate, proof that I had completed high-school as well as all my university credits. When I enrolled, they assured me that my university diploma was enough and that turned out not to be true. Well, getting all those documents in time for graduation is easier said than done when you were born in the Netherlands, completed high-school in France and got your undergrad degree in Spain, but looking at the bright side, it justified a nice European vacation.
If I had known about all the papers I needed, how hard it was to be accepted, and the amount of work required on top of an already demanding day job, I probably wouldn’t have considered enrolling. This shows once again that important decisions don’t always require much data. Now that it is over, I can say that I am extremely happy I completed the program. I learned a lot and made many new friends. I don’t expect this diploma to be a career changer, that was never my goal, but it certainly was a worthy experience.
So, you now all know why my blog went dark for the last two years. The good news is that I’m back now and that I should have time to update my site regularly.
MBA tuition, US$50,000. Wearing a ridiculous hat on graduation day, priceless…