Visiting Queen's

Appleseed documents his experience visiting Queen's here.

I boarded the train to Kingston Wednesday afternoon. With my previous experience travelling to London, I now knew what to expect as a first class passenger on a train.

I grabbed a cab after I got to Kingston, and arrived at the nice inn that Queen's set me up with. As promised, there was a package waiting for me in my room. It contained a welcome letter and a card, some placement stats, blurb about the professor whose class I was going to sit in the next day, and information on recommended eating places nearby.

Originally I was due at Goodes Hall by 8:15am the next morning, to have a brief tour of the building before class starts at 8:30. Then the lady at the office found out that the B&B served breakfast between 8 and 9, so she emailed to tell me to enjoy my breakfast, and arrive before 9:30. They would then let me into the class during the morning break. This was a minor detail that I really appreciated, and it made me feel that they actually do care about my comfort and well-being.

For the next couple of hours, I sat on my bed and read the material in the package, as well as browsed the Queen's MBA website. Since I was only going to have a "chat" the next day, I hadn't prepared anything except for a question or two that I wanted to ask.

At around 8 or 9, I decided that it would be a waste not to go out for a walk, get some fresh air, and get some food. The dinner that I had on the train before 4pm wasn't going to last until bedtime. I checked out the recommended places on the sheet and walked for 5 minutes to a nearby bar, since it was close. Got a snack to go. It was yummy. My room smelled of fish'n'chips afterwards, but no matter. :p

The next morning I got up and had an extremely delicious breakfast - I totally understood why Queen's didn't want me to miss it! Called a taxi, since I had a taxi voucher from the package, although walking to Goodes Hall would've been under 10 minutes. Arrived at 9:15.

I was introduced to everyone that was at the office at the time. The staff seemed very nice and approachable. I was then led on a brief tour of the building, and saw first hand what I'd seen in the brochure. Messy desks in the team rooms were an indicator that the students really used these rooms. They also had access to photocopier/printer/scanner/fax/etc. Fridge, microwaves, coffee machine, chocolate bars for a dollar! Overall it felt like a comfortable place to be in.

After the tour, I sat down with the associate director for our "chat". Since I hadn't yet put in an application, I spent some time telling her about myself - my background, what I've done, what I want to do. Other than that, there were basically no questions and I didn't need to say a lot of stuff. I then asked her what she thought distinguished the program from other schools, and she said that there were two things she thought were really unique to Queen's: the team-based approach and level of personalization. The Queen's website explains a lot of it. The associate director was honest in explaining that the team-based approach wasn't for everyone. She also mentioned that they use a variety of teaching methods (which is a big difference from using the case-based method only at Ivey).

She asked if I was still just looking around and comparing schools, and I honestly said yes, although by this time I had really started to like Queen's more than other places. She went on to say that the students really appreciate the "little things" that make a difference, little things such as having a team room, having access to photocopiers etc., having somebody deliver your textbooks to your desk, having photocopies of the lecture notes ready at your seat at every lecture. As I mentioned in my previous post, this was also something that really impressed me. One other thing I was told was that since I had already been invited there, my interview later would be over the phone.

We had talked for half an hour or so, when someone came in to let us know that the class had broken out. I was then led into the class to my seat at the back. Since I wasn't there for a formal interview, I had dressed myself in a nice shirt and pants, which were on par with what other female students had on, so I didn't really feel like an odd one out. There was a set of lecture handouts at my seat, and I even had a paper name plate. The student sitting next to me introduced himself and asked if I was there for the interview. I said that I was just invited to come for a "visit" and a "chat", and the student smiled and said "yeah, that was probably the interview."

When class resumed, a team finished off a presentation that they'd been doing that morning. They had been to a certain business, and were presenting their findings/recommendations. After a question and answer period and some comments from the professor, we turned our attention to today's material, which was a consulting case. It was very interesting for me, because the consulting firm presented in the case was one of my previous employers. The main character's problems as a consultant was very similar to what I had experienced. The class discussion was certainly interesting, and there was also some role-playing. This was very relavant to my job as well as my intended future career.

Towards the end of the class there was some discussion on the assignment that was just handed back, and a short lecture on six sigma. The professor had a great sense of humour and was thought provoking at the same time. It was a very good experience for me, and I knew that this was where I wanted to be.

The students I had asked to have lunch with came up and introduced themselves, and off we went. Lunch took almost two hours, during which we talked about almost anything and everything related to the program. Queen's puts you in teams, and then purposefully gives you way too much work to accomplished by yourself, so that you have to utilize your team. The professors are great. Yes, there are classes every morning and every afternoon, 8:30am to 4:30pm, but they don't feel like that's too much to take at all, because the classes are all so interesting. The printers sometimes malfuntion and it can be frustrating. Housing is cheap. It's cold in Kingston in the winter.

I told them that I was an introvert, which possibly means it'd be challenging for me to do team stuff all the time. They were quick to ease my concern by saying that I should look at every challenge as an opportunity. Your teammates have different backgrounds and personalities, and the challenge of team work is an opportunity to learn from others as well as learn to work with them. If you were really good at everything, team work being one of those things, then there would be no need for you to go back to school. An additional comment is that employers report that they could tell Queen's MBA grads apart from other grads, because of the good team work skills that Queen's graduates possess.

They also assured me that my GMAT score was definitely looked upon very favourably. That, combined with my good work experience, they thought that I almost had no problem getting in. Nevermind bad undergraduate marks, other components of my application can make it up. The one thing I was to really work on was my application essays. I needed to nail them.

After lunch, we returned to the MBA office, where I got a taxi voucher for getting back to the train station. My train wasn't until after 6pm, so after saying goodbye to the staff and students, I was off to "explore" on my own. I did no exploring. Instead, I found a spot in the library and started working on my application essays.

It was a very positive experience. The people that I met are down to earth and happy to help. Not to mention the serious level of personalization, both in the program and during my visit. I also loved Goodes Hall, it's beautiful.

Uniquely Queen's

I read the Queen's brochure, which just continued to impress me. Specifically, I was impressed with the following aspects (that I may or may not have known before, but was just outlined more clearly for me - in no particular order):

• Dedicated team-rooms. I wasn't sure that after years of being in the corporate environment, if I could stand being a student again, with no assigned desk, hauling my bags of laptop and books around wherever I went. The team rooms just make the logistics of getting around and meeting up with team members that much easier.


• Fit to lead. I hesitate to say that I'm unfit, but I'm definitely not the fittest. It should be interesting to see what this program has to offer.


• Personal assessment/coaching. Just adds a personal touch to things!


• Professional team facilitator. They're actually hired professionals, but also independent of the program, so they can focus specifically on teamwork issues that students encounter.
  
• Professional designation. I'm possibly interested in a PMP, so this is good for me.


• Incredible personal support. Somebody buys my books and delivers them to my desk. Somebody prints out powerpoint presentations and delivers them to my seat in class. This is too good to be the life of a student.

Most of these I have not seen offered at other business schools. I got very excited at the prospect of visiting Queen's.

QS World MBA Tour

I decided to go to this event and check out the schools that I was considering.

The Toronto stop was held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. I arrived just before 3pm, and there was a huge line up at the registration desk. If you had registered before the event, you would only need to pay $5, otherwise it would cost you $10. There were people in suits and ties and other people in jeans and T-shirts. Suit and tie was totally unnecessary, in my opinion - I think that as long as you're not in ripped baggy jeans and T-shirt with weird logos, you'll do fine.

Once I got in, my first stop was Queen's. This was also one main reason why I came to the event at all: since I was going to visit them the week after, I figured it'd be nice to say hi and get a brochure. I waited for my turn to talk to the lady I'd been corresponding with (they all wore nametags), and introduced myself. She was happy that I dropped by and said that she actually thought of emailing me to let me know that they'd be in town, but didn't get around to it. Since there were many people waiting at the table, I said that I'd chat more when I visit. Grabbed a brochure and left.

Other tables that I visited:

Ivey must've brought in a team of over two dozen people, of admissions staff, professors, and students. All of whom were busy talking to interested prospective students. It was quite the scene. I managed to say hi to the director of admissions, who remembered me from the visit a month back.

Cornell answered the questions I had about sending transcripts/proof of degree. Since I was "foreign", they had some special requests that I wanted to clarify. It turned out that because the system in Canada is fairly similar to that in the States, I could also just send a copy of my transcripts and not worry. They were friendly.

I found out that the "HEC" in HEC Montreal stood for "good school of business", or something like that. It also has nothing to do with HEC Paris. They assured me that one doesn't need to know French in order to live in Montreal. I liked the nice ladies at the table, and I also liked their program. If I didn't get into any of my top 3 choices, they would be the next down the list.

DeGroote wasn't so impressive, somehow. They were very adamant about not considering starting a 1-year program, and they say that their strength is in the co-op, which doesn't mean much to me. The admissions lady I talked to also didn't strike me as very enthusiastic.

Rotman's admissions ladies seemed like they weren't interested at all in anything people might possibly ask them. They chatted amongst themselves, I waited for about 15 seconds for them to notice me, to no avail. Since I wasn't very interested in them to begin with, I just left. Having said that, I did attend an MBA lecture given by one of Rotman's professors, and it was quite interesting. Although, I'm sure that almost any properly recognized school can put forward a good lecture, let alone Rotman. I just wasn't interested in their program as a whole.

Telfer didn't even participate in this thing. I hoped I wouldn't need to one day seriously consider the school, who either isn't in the the same or similar "league" as the other schools, or just didn't bother with these types of events.

I should mention that once you register with your email address, be prepared to be forever electronically bombarded by a hundred MBA schools around the world.

Queen's Visit Scheduled

I got a FedEx package from Queen's MBA. It basically says this:

We were very happy to recently receive your GMAT results, and congratulations on your excellent score of 770! We would like to invite you on an all expense paid overnight trip to visit Queen's, whenever you wish, during which time you would have the opportunities to sit in a class, chat with our program's Associate Director, and have lunch with students whose interests are similar to your own.

This is great! You gotta understand, I haven't even applied to Queen's yet. ALL I did was listing them as a recepient of my GMAT score report. What a deal. I had been looking for something similar to Ivey's class visit, from Queen's, but couldn't find anything. I guess it's fairly exclusive.

I emailed them back and said I'd be really happy to visit. After a couple of emails back and forth, I've picked a date and a couple of students with whom I want to have lunch. The lady in charge of this scheduled me with first class VIA rail travel and booked me at a B&B.

US MBA

Appleseed wrote a very good discussion on US or non-US MBA.

My major concern, of course, was the staggering amount of money required in order to do an MBA down in the States. I could get a line of credit, but with over 10k US dollars borrowed, the interest rate alone which I'd have to keep paying while at school, would be hundreds of dollars per month. Where am I supposed to get that money from? I would expect to be paying off the loan for several years after graduation, but it's the aspect of paying interest while I'm in the program that ticks me off. Our dirt cheap Canadian dollars don't help either - it would just make tuition and living expenses that much more expensive.

The other consideration is the length of the program. All top-tier US program are two years in length, which just adds to the time and living expenses that you spend. At this point I was really looking for a good one-year program, and was pretty much set on Queen's and Ivey.

Having said that, a good US school is recognized world-wide, and the compensation for jobs is significantly better in the US than in Canada. (I know this first hand from comparing salaries with my US colleagues who work for the same company, doing the same job as I did, only in the States.) If I can just deal with two difficult years of school and pull it off, ten years from now I would possibly be fairly well off.

Unlike Appleseed, I'm single and open to staying in the US long-term after an MBA. Although in theory you can still choose to move south of the border after you finish an MBA in Canada, in reality I believe that it'd be easier for you to stay in the US, if you had already gone to school there.

I then decided to apply to one good US school. My chances of getting into this school would be similar to my chances at Queen's or Ivey, and this would be a reputable school that nonetheless runs a program small enough to allow for personal interactions, etc. Of course, it also needs to offer a program that I like. After some research, I chose The Johnson School at Cornell University. It's not ranked that much to the top such that I likely wouldn't get in anyway, but it's within the top 20 and an ivy league school with a good reputation. Its program is small (compared to almost all other good US programs), and its based out of the small town of Ithaca, NY. Therefore, in addition to having virtually no commuter students like in big cities, housing would also be relatively cheap. Lastly, it is not that far away from home in Toronto.

I would apply to the Johnson School the same time I apply to Queen's and Ivey, and would hope that I get into a Canadian program. If it so happens that I only get into the program in the States, I would prepared myself for the long (and financially difficult) haul. I also figured that it would take the Johnson School longer to process my application, because they admit a significantly larger class. So by the time I hear a decision from them, I would already have my Canadian decisions.

Ivey Class Visit

It was actually the first time I'd been on a first class train, which impressed me to no end. For starters, I didn't know that they would provide a meal. After a big breakfast at home, I had to say pass to the delicious-looking breakfast that everyone else was having. The attendants walked by every 10 or 15 minutes and kept offering stuff: drinks, pastries, more drinks, more stuff to eat... no wonder the tickets cost so much.

I arrived at the train station in London shortly before 10am, and got on a limo arranged by Ivey. There were 7 of us from this train that were getting picked up. Ten minutes later, we were at the Spencer Leadership Centre. The admissions director was there to greet each one of us, we had coffee and fruit, and joined the rest of the visitors in one of the classrooms.

There were about two dozens of people that came out for this visit. We first sat through an admissions presentation of mostly things I already knew - that is, easily found on their website. One thing that they really stress is that they were the oldest MBA school in Canada, and had a huge alumni network of 40 thousand people I believe. The alumni network kinda came with being an old school, and also, their alumni included both MBA and HBA graduates. The HBA is their undergraduate counterpart of the MBA, where students do work that's very similar to the MBA during the final two years of their studies, after which you can apply to do an accelerated MBA for 8 months at Ivey.

I noticed that when asked about why Ivey was not ranked as THE top school, one of the staff completely dissed the rankings, saying that there are many factors that influence the rankings, and that he didn't know at all how the rankings people came up with their rankings. I understand, but that's not really an answer. There was just a hint of arrogance, for lack of a better word, that I didn't like.

This is also a good place to mention the fact that I later noticed that Ivey was only accredited by one of the world's top three accrediting bodies. I know that this doesn't have much practical impact for an individual student, but you would expect that recognitions like this would be important for them as a school.

After the presentation, four professors took over and did a brief introduction of the academic side of things as well as a question and answer session. I already knew that they rely heavily on the case-based method. They also made sure we knew that a large percentage of the grades are based on class participation. While it was also made clear that the grading is based on the quality of your comments rather than the quantity, I don't think it would be very easy (even for a professor) to grade the quality of a comment. Also, assuming all students are of similar aptitude, the more things you say the more likely you are to hit a "good quality" comment. Overall, I think that this just puts too much emphasis on speaking up in class, and possibly pressure on the students to say things all the time.

There was a brief tour of the building after the presentation. They do have a nice-looking building, complete with places to eat, meeting rooms that you can book, and even their own gym. Lunch was then provided in a lounge, with a panel of current students who were of course very enthusiastic about the program and very willing to help and answer any questions or concerns that we had. In fact, Ivey has a "student ambassador" program just for the purpose of recruitment, where you can personally email the student ambassadors and it is their duty to attend to you.

Ivey's class schedule alternates between morning and afternoon. On any given day you would only get one 4-hour block of class, either in the morning or in the afternoon, but not both. The professors and the students think that there would surely not be enough time to do all the work, if class runs the entire day. This is interesting to note, since Queen's usually has classes both in the morning and in the afternoon, all day everyday.

After lunch, we sat in the first half of the day's class, which was accounting. We were given the case just that morning, so there hadn't been time to look through it, plus I knew nothing whatsoever about accounting, so it was a little difficult to actually understand the class. One thing that's for sure though is that the class was very dynamic, and students were VERY eager to participate. The professor acted as a facilitator to the students' discussions (this was also a point Ivey made sure that we understood).

I'd like to add that because Ivey uses only cases for the entire duration of the program, you end up with over 300 cases by the time you're done. Because cases are practical, a lot of alumni find that the higher up the ranks they are within a company, the more applicable their MBA learnings become (with regards to making executive decisions, etc.).

During the class break, we made our way to another room where a career management presentation awaited us. Of course the numbers are impressive, and I don't need to say more. As with most other MBA programs, the most popular areas of employment for grads are finance and consulting. Ivey integrates their career management course into the curriculum just like accounting or any other course, and uses cases in this career management course as well. A typical case would be like "Linda is finishing up her MBA and is torn between becoming a financial analyst and a management consultant" etc. I thought this approach was interesting enough that I should mention it.

The day ended with opportunities to ask questions to admissions and career management staff, who then arranged for those us that came by train to be picked up by a couple of limos to head back to the train station. (The first class waiting room at the London station is beautiful, by the way.)

Overall I thought it was a good experience, and good effort on Ivey's part. Apart from what I've already mentioned, here are some other things that stood out (neither positively nor negatively):

• Incredible amount of workload - students, faculty, and staff kept warning us about it
• "Transformation" - a word that's often used to describe the effect that an Ivey education has on students. I thought it was interesting.
• A lot of the staff have graduated from Ivey. The "director of admissions" is a young HBA who graduated only in 2003.

I also had the following reservations:

• For at least some of the topics, I believe that lectures (and other methods) would at least be a good supplement to the case-based method.
• They kept mentioning the HBA to an extent that gave me the impression that you'd be better off choosing the HBA as an undergrad, rather than the MBA. What's up with that?
• The issue with how important class participation is.
• Rankings and accreditation.

Overall though it is definitely a good school. The reputation and alumni network should come in very handy when it comes time to look for a job.

Appleseed documents his experience with Ivey here.

Ivey Class Visit Scheduled

When I'm not doing the mock tests, I browse the internet and find out about the schools I'm interested in. Ivey offers a class visit every month, when they welcome a bunch of prospective students to campus, sit in a class, sit through presentations, talk with profs/students/admissions people/etc. This is all expense paid if you live in southern Ontario, up to $600 reimbursement if you lived in North America (I think), and up to $1200 reimbursement if you're anywhere else in the world. If you fall under the reimbursement category, you do actually need to apply to Ivey for the next cohort, before you can get your money.

This is open to pretty much everyone, as long as you're more or less eligible to apply to their program. They do require your resume before they can confirm your booking.

I registered online and someone was quick to get back to me. They needed to know how I wanted to get myself to London. From Toronto, I could either drive and receive a gas card (forgot how much), or I could opt for first class train travel. I opted for first class train travel. Its net worth was more than the gas card, and I could relax instead of concentrating on the road. I was put in touch with a VIA rail booking agent, and I was now booked to visit Ivey on August 14th.

Choosing Schools

Of course, preparing for the GMAT wasn't the only item on my agenda during this period of time. If I wanted to make it to the next class, I still needed to make some decisions about where to apply, and craft my applications. I also didn't want to be too late in the game, especially this year when many people are choosing to go back to school because of the recession looming in the background.

Believe it or not, my choices were actually very limited. As I've mentioned before, I have a weak undergraduate GPA. Specifically, most of the Canadian programs have a hard GPA requirement of 3.0, which I don't have. Now that I think about it, this was also part of the reason I put off doing the GMAT two years ago - I didn't think I had a chance of being admitted into a reasonable school.

With this in mind, the most popular schools in Toronto where I'm at - Rotman (U of Toronto) and Schulich (York U) - were out of the question. I had no doubt that they would not waive this requirement under any circumstances, partly because I've personally experienced the bureaucratic ways of U of T, and partly because there's surely no lack of good applicants that meet this requirement, so there would be no need for them to make exceptions.

On a side note, Rotman and Schulich rarely interview applicants. Rumour has it that if you had a stellar GPA/GMAT/both, you're pretty much guaranteed a spot in the program. This means that you might get a classmate who is an expert at studying (on their own) but lacks other essential skills.

I also figured that I didn't want to stay in a big city anyway, with commuter classmates. I wanted to go somewhere where the MBA class is way more than just schoolwork. I wanted an entire community, complete with networking, socializing and forming friendships. I didn't want to be in a class with people who disappear to go home after class. I also wanted to attend a small program, so that there's enough personal attention and less bureaucracy to go around.

The other thing I prefered was a one-year program, instead of two years. Basically, a one-year program does not contain much less material. First, a "two-year" program really only uses 8 months in a year, so it's only 16 months, versus the 12-months of the one-year program. Secondly, these 16-month-programs are way less intensive - specifically, many of them don't have classes on Fridays, for example.

The only real drawback is the lack of internship opportunities in a 12-month program, but considering that I want to stay in consulting, I don't think that it is necessary for me to have this internship experience. I'm not getting any younger and would rather just get it over with in less time.

Appleseed also briefly discussed the pros and cons of a 12-month-program here, as well as posted a very comprehensive list of what to consider when choosing a program here.

Eventually, without visiting or talking to any school (due to lack of time), I narrowed down my choices to three schools (links on the right):

Queen's School of Business
Richard Ivey School of Business (University of Western Ontario)
The Johnson School (Cornell University)

One thing that these schools have in common is that they're all relatively small programs in small cities, and most, if not all, of their students relocate for the year. I will talk about my experience with each of them individually in later posts.

I thought that my odds of getting into each of these schools are similar, and so applied to them all at around the same time.

I also picked out a few safety schools, and was going to do another round of applications in February if I didn't get into any of my top choices:

HEC Montreal
Specifically a business school with no other disciplines. Like Queen's, this place is accredited by all three of the world's leading accrediting bodies. One-year program, has a consulting focus that I'm interested in.

Telfer School of Management (University of Ottawa)
One-year program also with consulting options, accredited by 2 out of the 3 accrediting bodies.

DeGroote School of Business (McMaster University)
This made the list because it was close to home, although I was increasingly leaning towards not going there. They only have a 2-year program without a consulting focus, and an admissions lady at the MBA fair told me that their strength was in the co-op program, which is mostly for new grads without work experience.