It’s amazing how time flies in B-School. It’s been three months, one week and two days since our Accelerated MBA (AMBA) program started! But, it feels like it was only yesterday that we went through our class introductions with Dean Swierenga.
For those of you, who are wondering what an Accelerated MBA program is, here is a brief introduction (Note: For details, I highly recommend you refer the official page - http://www.johnson.cornell.edu/academic/accelerated/). The basic idea is very straightforward; Johnson school selects around forty students from hundreds of its applicants, for its extremely aggressive and intense AMBA program. Please don’t get the wrong impression that our two-year program is less intense because trust me they have their own set of challenges. However, what differentiates the AMBA program from other MBA programs across United States is its intense summer schedule.
This year, the AMBA program started on May 31st and since then it has been a roller coaster ride for all us AMBAs. We had classes almost everyday from 9.00am to 3.45pm. The first week was focused on covering business statistics followed by the final exam on the weekend. This was followed by series of six core courses with two cores taught over a period of two weeks. One would think that two weeks for studying two cores is not that bad. And, frankly I would have agreed with you, if only we didn’t have to prepare for quizzes, solve tons of homework problems, read tons material prior to each class and write our midterms and finals on weekends and/or weekdays. Oh and not to forget we also had several ongoing individual and team deliverables, which sometimes could drive you nuts!
You might then question as to how much can one actually learn during such an intense program? There are obviously some trade offs; the main being we do not get time to delve into details that is not a part of the two week coursework. However, I don’t believe that such a situation arose for me or my classmates. I think this was mainly because of our amazing faculty. And, when I say that I really mean it…I found that our faculty put in extra efforts during summer. They were accessible to the students all through the day and late nights and made sure everyone in the class understood the concepts really well. This latter is very important, since given the back to back class schedule during summer, its tough catching up. Infact, I found that some of the faculty spent time learning about the student's backgrounds and involved them during the class discussion. Oh and they all made sure we were wide awake all the time ;-). Yeah, as you can imagine, most of us didn’t really sleep much during summer... but hey, we asked for it!
The sense of achievement at the end of summer is unlike any other you might have ever experienced. It is amazing how much I have learned in such a short time and how I have started to think strategically. As I enter the fall semester, I realize that it's not the same as summer and we now have a different challenge – “Time management!” Yeah, we have unbelievable amount of activities every week and one has to pick the right courses, clubs and speaker series and networking events to attend. Am just three weeks into the fall semester and I must say ‘Hail’ to the two-year program students, who do this for two consecutive years!
