So Why Fisher?
A lot of people ask me why I moved all the way to Ohio from Arizona to go to grad school. Quite honestly, out of all eight programs that I applied to (USC, UCLA, Arizona, Rochester, Indiana, WashU, Carnegie Mellon, and Ohio State), the people at the Fisher College blew me away. This includes the staff, faculty, and other students that I met during the Red Carpet Weekend event that they hosted.
I think there's something to be said about people from the Midwest. They are just as talented as the people that I met from other schools, but humble, down-to-earth, and a pleasure to be around. Our class is close-knit, collaborative, and a LOT of fun.
We have awesome events every week that are arranged by our social committee. We do bar crawls, parties at our MBA housing complex, cultural events, sporting events, etc. We also have larger events like the annual ski trip, a weekend trip to Put-In-Bay and Fisher Formal, a.k.a. MBA Prom. We even had a beard and mustache competition after winter break with over a dozen entries, and this year we expect that number to at least double. For the Fisher first years reading this blog, here's the schedule. Get excited.
Monday: beards
Tuesday: creative expressions
Wednesday: goatees/fu manchus
Thursday: mustaches
Thursday night will then be the 2nd Annual Fisher Mustache Bash.
And who could mention Ohio State without talking about football. I've been to all the home games when I was in town, saw Ohio State beat Michigan 42-7 and even jumped into a freezing cold Mirror Lake before the Michigan game (search for "Mirror Lake" on Youtube, total madness). But that's all I'll say about football. I think we oversell it a little when we could be highlighting the other accomplishments of the school (like being in the top 15 nationally for Guggenheim Fellows, 11th overall for research expenditures, or number one or two amongst all American universities in number of faculty elected as fellows to the American Association for the Advancement in Science since 2002). But hey, that's just my opinion.
Through my experiences over the past year with case competitions, personal networking, and my summer internship, I have met other MBA students from dozens of other colleges. From talking to them about their programs, I think we have some of the highest numbers of participants at our events compared to other programs. There's some events where we've had 80% of our class at. Even the people who don't drink come out and enjoy each other's company. And studies have shown that people who eat and drink together feel more comfortable around each other and are more likely to complete their tasks.
With around 145 students in each incoming class, I know everyone on a first and last name basis. At some of the other schools I was looking at, I would be just a number. So I'm not going to graduate from what the rankings deem a "top five" MBA program. But I know there's dozens of people in my class that I will be friends with for the rest of my life. And in the grand scheme of things, I'm ok with that because life is all about relationships anyway.
Mike ^_^