Why I chose Baruch to go for my MBA

At one time in my undergraduate days I had gone to one of those schools with a fancy name. The tuition was high but I thought I would get a world class education. I stayed there for 2 semesters and was bored out of my mind with having to learn just basic subjects just to get started. I dropped out after that. A couple of years later I met a friend who was going to Brooklyn College at night part time to earn her degree for pre-med. She told me the school was great and the work was challenging and interesting. I decided to inquire for myself and went to one of their open house sessions to hear about what they had to offer. I was sold and I signed up to start in September 1981. Right from the start I loved this school. The assignments were tough, but I was learning things that added value to what I could contribute as an employee in the work place. I had to drop in and out of school over a period of many years due to work and family requirements, but in the year 2000 I decided to give it my all and in June 2005 I graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business.

I had such a great time at Brooklyn College that I decided that for my next school it would be a school within the City University of New York system aka CUNY. For me as a business student that meant Baruch College. Baruch was the only B school I applied to. I sort of knew what I was getting into because from 2004 to 2005 I attended 3 open house sessions to learn about the school. Each time I visited I was impressed by the high level of commitment demonstrated by the faculty and administration at these sessions. I said to myself: These people work here and they love this place, so it has got to be good! So I applied. I had established a good reputation as a hard working student at Brooklyn College, and because of that the Chairman of the Economics Department Professor Robert I. Bell wrote a 2 page letter of recommendation for me to submit to Baruch with my application.

Of course I had to take the GMAT and do a few other things too, but the letter from Brooklyn College was the icing on the cake. I was accepted and started in January of 2006 to study for my MBA degree, and you know what? I fell in love with this school too. The work here is very challenging and because of the team projects I have made so many great new friends here, and the faculty is great! Because of this at the end of the first semester I started doing volunteer work for the school to help out at the new student orientations by working as a student leader to help the new students become acclimated to the school. I did this to try and give back to the school that has given me so much, and I have been doing it every semester since then. You can see photos of those events through the link in the upper right corner on this blog. Just put on your sunglasses first because you will be blinded by all the smiles in pictures.

The links to the Baruch College photos should appear as white text links inside a blue recatangular box on the right side of this page. If you do not see the blue box then click the HOME link on the bottom left side of this page to bring up the home page of this blog to get the box with links in it.

Why Baruch College is the best B school

Today we are firmly entrenched in a globalized economy. No longer can any corporation or country go it alone when producing a product or service on a large scale. The key to success today is cooperation on a global scale to maximize resources and minimize costs. Baruch College is perfectly positioned to prepare students for the global economy of today because it is the largest and most ethnically, and racially diversified business school in the world. It is also situated in the heart of New York City, which is the multi-cultural capital of the world. As of this posting the school has 15,730 students enrolled, and of that 2,394 are Graduate Students. The students come from over 120 different countries and speak 110 different languages. The ratio between male and female students is 48% to 52%. But what really makes Baruch special is the style of teaching.

Most of the classes stress a team approach to learning and problem solving. Teams typically range in size from 2 to 10 students and they are chosen at random. So a typical team might have a student from America, China, Brazil, Russia, Chile, Mumbai, etc. Because of the multicultural make up of the teams a global mentality of cross cooperation comes into existence among the team members because that is what is needed for the project to succeed and earn a good grade. Each team arranges its own work schedule, but during the times when they meet to brainstorm for ideas on how to meet the goals of an assignment another thing happens, a cross cultural understanding of different viewpoints evolves and also bonds of friendship start to form between the team members, and those friendships remain in place even after the project is over.

Even though Baruch is a huge school, because of its vertical campus, by design one cannot help but run into their former teammates in the halls on the escalators or in elevators to just say Hi or Hello and touch base on what is going on in each others lives. By design and methodology Baruch is leveraging the human capital of its faculty and students to produce world class business students with a global market mentality and mind set, who are able to take on the challenges of working in todays global business market with first hand experience, upon graduation. There is no other Business school in the world today that can approach this on such a large scale.

If you read this post to look for the links to the Baruch College photos, but do not see them, then here is what you have to do. The links to the Baruch College photos should appear as white text links inside a blue recatangular box on the right side of this page. If you do not see the blue box then click the HOME link on the bottom left side of this page to bring up the home page of this blog to get the box with links in it.