What have I learned from this whole process?

After all the soul-searching that comes with applying to school, deciding, committing, etc, I have to ask myself if I've learned anything about myself from the whole process. The short answer: nothing Earth-shattering, but a few things.

One thing is that I don't have much (enough?) respect for the MBA as a degree. It's a practical, useful, professional degree, and it's going to be a great way for me to change career, but I still understand that it's something of a superfluous degree. To paraphrase Henry Mintzberg in Managers, Not MBAs, you can't be a doctor without going to medical school, or a lawyer without law school, but anyone can run a business without business school. In fact, most of the best businesses are run by non-MBAs!

I started an MBA years ago at Emory (long story), and I'll never forget the moment in economics class when the professor tried to use a very simple derivative to explain something. You would have thought she had poked the class with a stick. "We were told there was no calculus in this class!" all the marketing majors whined. In any other master's program, the (proper) student response would be: "Crap, I'd better go learn some basic calculus." In B-school it's: "I'm the customer here, and don't you forget it!" Granted, you can make your experience as rigorous as you'd like, but I still feel that the MBA doesn't earn you as much credibility as it does connections! I guess that's a decent tradeoff.

Another thing I've learned is that there's a great group of people in the blogosphere who can be very helpful and supportive (most of the time!). It's great that technology can bring people together like that, and it's added a lot to the experience. Much appreciation to Hella for running his site.

It's interesting to compare how I felt at the beginning of the process with how it feels at the end. Last October, I was at the MBA expo in Manhattan, listening to the presentations. I was excited by the idea that I could go back to school for a while and change to the healthcare industry from Wall Street. By December, I was convinced that Cornell was the perfect program for me, but thought that I might retain the option to just stay at my job. By January, I was blown away by MIT's Biomedical Enterprise Program. After interviewing at Cornell, MIT, and Duke in February, I was confused. Fortunately in March, I was accepted everywhere, and even got scholarship money! I first eliminated my original top choice of Cornell, because they don't have a dedicated healthcare program. Then I had the tough choice between Duke and MIT. In the end, Boston killed MIT's chances, despite the ridiculously great prestige in the MIT name. Boston just doesn't compare to Raleigh-Durham in terms of quality of life, weather, and cost. I just wasn't willing to be unhappy with my environment for three years.

Since making that decision, I've bought a house in Durham (mine and my wife's first!), and we are eagerly awaiting the imminent birth of our daughter (also our first!) in a couple of weeks. This has put the whole B-school thing in perspective. It's going to be great, and I'm going to make as much of it as I possibly can, but it is ultimately a means to an end: a way for me to help provide security, and maybe a little prosperity, for myself and my family.