The Best and Worst of Business School

So after a 4 month hiatus, I've decided it's time to kick the tires on the old blog. I can assure you that my lack of activity online is a result of an abundance of activity on campus. Classes, recruiting, exams, extra curricular crap...it all adds up to a full time schedule with unpaid overtime. Here are a few highlights and low-lights of my MBA experience so far:

Pros:

• Never a dull moment: It's like working a 70 hour a week job where all you do is talk about business with 300 of your closest, smartest friends. Please smack me the next time you hear me complain
  
• Try something new: I've been a finalist in the stock pitch competition, met industry executives, led a job trek, and sang the sesame street theme in front of the entire school to get back our beloved bird
  
• Educate me please: I've learned more about business in the last 4 months than I ever thought possible. Then again, Darden is basically the boot camp of MBA programs, so I don't have much of a choice
  
• College fun: Thursday night drinking club, 100-case party, the Darden prom...all excuses to act like you just turned 21 (or younger)
  
• Amazing classmates: I am just blown away by the caliber of my colleagues...smart, interesting, passionate, humble, insane are a few adjectives that come to mind



• Free food: Recruiters shower us with Chic-Fil-A and Mellow Mushroom during briefings

Cons:

• Living apart from the wife: I only get to see Ginalyn on the weekends, and even then I'm still busy with school work
  
• Time: I no longer have time to read books, exercise, play fantasy football, watch movies/TV, keep abreast on current events, shower?
  
• Networking: Bullshitting with companies is necessary evil, but a huge drain on your time. At least I'm not looking for internships in consulting, or this would be an even greater pain in the ass
  
• Money: It's much harder to live on a college budget after 4 years of the DC lifestyle
  
• Cover Letters: I can only handle just so much ass kissing mixed with self promotion


• UVA undergrads: As a hokie, it pains me to see so many kids in Nantucket red shorts and polo shirts

All in all, it's been a fun year so far and I'm only 25% done. Bring it on Q3...

An unexpected turn of events

About one year ago to the date, I began my quest to join the class of 2011 at one of four top MBA programs in the country. Over the next 11 and 1/2 months, I watched my grad school dream turn into a nightmare as the global economic crisis caused a 30% surge in b-school applications and made a typically difficult application process next to impossible. As spring rolled around my 100+ hours of essay writing was worth exactly three rejection letters (from institutions that will remain nameless) and one wait list offer from the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. As one might expect, I was completely crushed by this turn of events. Two of the programs didn't even bother offering me interviews. Everything I had worked for over the past 10 years seemed to be worthless (including BS and MS engineering degrees from a top university, a GMAT score in the 98th percentile, and 4 years of work experience at a top management consulting firm). My entire graduate school plan was hanging by a shoestring at UVA and I dreaded having to repeat this gut wrenching process again in the fall.

I loathed the idea of accepting defeat this way. I didn't give up multiple VT home football games in the fall writing applications to be turned down by a handful of automated emails. So in late March I decided to try and make the best of my wait list offer at UVA (I'm sure there's a Winston Churchill saying I could quote here, but seriously, I'm just not that lame). I started sending my contact in the Darden admissions office (her name is Wendy) regular updates on everything I did since my application was submitted in January. If I had a new management experience on my project, I wrote Wendy. If I led a firm activity or extra engagement, I wrote Wendy. If I got an award, I wrote Wendy. If I had a significant role in a community service activity, I wrote Wendy. I even convinced one of my coworkers to send in an additional letter of recommendation touting my accomplishments and abilities. By the time July rolled around I was averaging an email to Wendy every three to four weeks (I seriously believe that any more than this frequency would have killed my candidacy). I was patient, enthusiastic, and hopeful, but I also fully expected to reapply the following year.

On the morning of July 21st, I received a rather odd email from Wendy explaining that a spot may or may not come available over the next few weeks, but she didn't know if or when this would happen. Wendy asked if I would still be interested in a spot if it were to materialize. That afternoon I replied and said that I would certainly accept an offer if it came by the end of the month, otherwise I looked forward to reapplying to the program in the fall. Less than 60 seconds after sending this email, I received a phone call from Sara Neher, the Darden director of admissions. Of course, my iPhone froze up as I tried to answer the call, so she left me a message to call her back (Steve Jobs, you really gotta fix this problem!). I called Sara back immediately and she informed me that I was to be extended an offer for admissions. Later that afternoon Wendy sent me a congratulatory email stating that my persistent contact with the admissions department and the professionalism shown in my correspondence more or less sealed the deal for my acceptance. I look forward to joining the Darden program later this month and truly believe that the path I took to get there will cause me to savor the experience even more.

I guess the point of this post is it gives you a basic blueprint for getting into b-school off the wait list (be persistent, be courteous, be professional, and don't give up). You could probably also claim this is blueprint for success in just about any challenge in life, so maybe I just learned my first lesson a few months early. We'll see...

P.S. I obviously see the irony in going to UVA for business school after receiving undergraduate and graduate degrees from Virginia Tech. I'm sure I'll explore this situation in a new post within the next few months...

Jimmy Carter Says Yes

This campaign strategy should be adopted by all politicians

Grow Up Already! (Why I hate the Harry Potter series)

OK, to be honest, I think J. K. Rowling is one of the driving forces behind making reading cool again amongst our youth. In the information age where books compete against television, the Internet and (shudder) twitter, this is no small feat. The Harry Potter series is no doubt helping raise the collective SAT scores of our country's children (just like McDonald's and Pepsi Co are helping raise their cholesterol levels). So for keeping our kids' 12-year old minds stimulated while they chug down super size shamrock shakes, Ms. Rowling, you get a tip of my hat.

However, despite all the praise and accolades, I still deeply loath Harry Potter, Rowling and the like. Why would I hate something so seemingly harmless and fun? Because the proliferation of adults reading Harry Potter books is making everybody over the age of 14 a whole lot dumber. That's right, there is an equal and opposite effect that these books have on adults. When a 7-year old reads a book written for the 8th grade-level, she is greatly improving her reading comprehension and English skills and is well on her way to the Ivy League. When a 25-year old college grad chooses to read this crap, he is steadily reducing his intelligence and brain capacity (much like excessive alcohol consumption or sniffing glue). Thus, one could argue that thanks to Ms. Rowling, the typical American's intelligence expands rapidly at a young age, peaks just before high school, and then enjoys a slow and steady decline for the next 65 years thanks to a combination of age, mild drug abuse and Fox News.

I know most of your think I'm full of shit and that I have absolutely no evidence. Both of these claims are completely true, but let me ask you this. If Lance Armstrong never got off his big wheels as a kid, would he have ever won the Tour de France 7 times? Come on people, take the training wheels off already!

Jeff Butt's Reading List for the Modern Intellectual:

• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
• Warren Buffett's Letters to Berkshire Shareholders (available for free at http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/)
• The World is Flat by Tom Friedman
• The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham
• Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• Mein Kampf by Richard Cheney

The most confusing part of your childhood...

You may not know this, but I know the most confusing and disturbing part of your childhood. No, it's not the awkward sleepovers at your uncle Ted's studio apartment or the grabby clown from your 4th birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese. It's the fact that there were TWO different Ghostbusters cartoons that aired on Saturday mornings. One was called The Real Ghostbusters and was based on the 1984 movie starring Dan Akroid and Bill Murrey. The other was simply called The Ghost Busters with a similar plot, but very different characters and (for some reason) a gorilla. After staying up all night playing The Legend of Zelda and eating an entire box of Blue Raspberry Blowpops from the Price Club, watching these two cartoons sequentially would make your nose bleed as your body welcomed a soothing epileptic seizure.

Thanks to the magic of the Internet, I can now explain to you the reason why and perhaps you can shake the childhood psychological trauma this paradox undoubtedly caused you (in addition to this). The story actually begins in the mid 70s before you were born when gas was expensive and the economy sucked (creepy). A firm called Filmation had a one season, 15 episode flop called The Ghost Busters where two guys and a gorilla drove around in an old Studabaker and hunted ghosts. Obviously, this was not the kind of show that one would build a career out of.

Following the SNL inspired blockbuster hit move The Ghostbusters, Filmation sued Columbia pictures over the naming rights and they settled out of court with the help of a shyster lawyer. Columbia proceeded to name their cartoon show The Real Ghostbusters to directly distinguish it from the Filmation show. Additionally, to capitalize on the movie's success Filmation created it's own cartoon series with a very similar name and made WAY more money than the original series.

So now you know why you always cried at the sight of Santa Claus and you still sleep with a night light. And tell your therapist to address her thank you cards to Hallmark Entertainment, who now owns the rights to most of the Filmation back catalog.

The DC Housing Crisis

Much like the rest of the nation, Washington DC is in the midst of a severe housing crisis, but it's in the opposite direction. According to zillow.com, the cost of the median home in my neighborhood of Arlington, VA is just under $500,000 (as compared to the median US home price of $187,000). While this may seem unreasonably high for a DC suburb, it is in fact down 6% from a year ago.


What does it take to afford the median home in Arlington?



Now for the fun part, financial calculations! First let's assume that our buyer has good credit, relatively little debt (including student loans, car loans or credit cards) and enough cash in the bank to make a 10% downpayment of $50,000 (this downpayment alone poses a significant barrier to ownership). Based on these assumptions our buyer qualifies for a $450,000 loan at a 30-year fixed interest rate of 6.5% resulting in a mortgage payment of $2844/mo (since the loan is over $417,000, we have to use the jumbo rate instead of the current standard rate of 5.4%). Let's also assume home utilities of $350/mo, annual property taxes of $4325 (Arlington tax rate is 0.865%), annual maintenance costs or $2000 and annual homeowners insurance of $850.

That leaves our buyer with annual housing costs of about $45,500. This is a slightly conservative estimate because you can deduct your home interest payments from your federal taxes, but that all depends on a number of unique personal financial aspects. Using the rule of thumb of paying no more than 30% of your gross income on housing, that means our buyer must make an annual income of about $152,000!

This means that our buyer is either a well to do lawyer (without significant student loans), an experienced manager/senior manager in a professional services firm or large company, or a modestly well off married couple making slightly over $75,000/year each in jobs with the government or professional services firms. Who does this exclude from affordable housing? Just about any non-federal public servant (teachers, cops, fairfax county prosecutors), most service industry workers, and about half of the pan handlers that post themselves at the corner or fairfax dr and glebe rd (seriously, don't give these fake homeless people any of your money). As a benchmark, the median Washington metro area family of four household income is $99,000/year (missing our Arlington median target by $53,000/year).



So what does half a million bucks get ya?

What kind of dream home does half a million dollars get our "well off" lawyer/senior manager, or our "modestly well off" couple of business consultants? A 2-bedroom, 1.5 Bath, 1000 sqft single family home between 1-3 miles from the nearest metro station.


The house you'll buy is probably between 50-75 years old, has horrifyingly inadequate HVAC and insulation, and has spent at least 10 years on the rental market being abused by beer chugging, pot smoking, late night chicken wing burning recent college graduates. Congratulations, the baby's room smells like pabts blue ribbon and stale Mario's pizza! You're having another kid? I'll help you convert the living room into a third bedroom as all four of you fight over the one shower upstairs.
Don't make $152,000/year? Don't fret! You can rent a 650 sqft, 1-bedroom apartment in Ballston for only $1800/month. After buying enough top ramen to feed your family 7-nights a week, you will have just enough income left to catch a cab to home depot and buy a rope.

It's about time

Here's a little taste of what I'm all about...