Big Name Schools In Town

Follow up my last post, I went to the MIT and Stanford info session in SH on two consecutive nights and saw some same faces on two consecutive nights... interesting~ But these two schools are like no other, and I can actually sense the difference between them thanks to the info session, I'll talk in more details in the following.

MIT Sloan
MIT's info session is in Fudan U, my alma mater, which is a little far from downtown. That's also why there were only 40-50 ppl in the hall that day. The presentation given by the Assistant Director of Admission is awesome. This guy knows Sloan very well, and he actually told us a lot about the history of Sloan and the great faculty there. As for the the application, one point worth noting is that he literally said: don't put ur long term plan in the cover letter, cause your plan before MBA might very likely change to something else after MBA. Then there were three alumni to answer the questions. All three are pursuing some form of entrepreneurship right now, that kinda shows that MIT is a school of entrepreneurship spirit.

Stanford GSB
Stanford's info session is just downstairs of my office, that worked great for me. The venue belongs to a company making office furnitures called HAWORTH, and their workspace is like super cool~ basically it feels more like a lounge:P And Stanford, very kindly, offers food for participants:D But there were so many ppl, almost 150 i guess... The presentation is mostly about the academic experience, the new curriculum, and the class size. It actually is the first time I finally start to understand the new curriculum, coz either i'm too dumb, or the website didn't explain it too clearly... That two Stanford alumni are both very funny guys. When talking about one great experience in school, one guy said he organized a Latin Chinese BBQ to bridge the two somehow isolated student communities, and he's proud of it. LOL. Then I asked them to describe the difference between young students and old students, the other guy told me he didn't actually know who's younger or who's older. Only different thing is between married and unmarried students, which married students often go home early, while unmarried ones go party till dawn:P As for application, one indication for the 'what matters most' essay is there have been and will be too many people writing about their family, so if you're planning to write about your family matters to you most, maybe u should think deeper. (i've been to that stage...)

I'm applying to both, but I have to admit that I love Stanford better coz the atmosphere there feels more relaxing and the weather is better. But both are great schools with good entrepreneurship spirit, going to either one will help me in launching my own business. (like I'm really deciding between them....-.-b) But now I really need to get these essays done!