Monkeys, need some guidance on a peculiar situation, but first a little bit of a background. I studied engineering/CS for my undergrad in an emerging market - my home country is in the middle east- graduated top of my class, had decent leadership experience under my belt by the time I graduated - started a company sophomore year that grew and currently has double digit employees- after graduation hired a full time CEO and stayed on the board as I had other interests. Worked in venture capital for the past 4 years and that is what i enjoy doing.
Now for the question. I want to study towards a graduate degree, but I don't want to do an MBA, I have a diverse base of interests and I am more of an explorer/tinkerer/extremely curious, a breadth kind of guy. I studied engineering for my undergrad because it's sort of a family tradition, not what I wanted and to be honest I am thankful for my background because I had no clue what I wanted at the time but it came in handy. I kept looking for generalist programs where I could augment my business education but at the same time have the freedom to explore other subjects and failed to find one and just as I was giving up hope and going for an MBA I stumbled across this program:
http://www.journalism.columbia.edu/page/247-knight-bagehot-fellowship/2…
What are your thoughts? also do you have any programs in mind that could achieve the same end in mind? I also want to continue in finance I just want to take a break and just read, meet people, learn etc.
Says you need four years journalism experience
But I've been in your position and had looked at Masterson real estate programs or some MSF programs as ways to gain targeted knowledge outside the normal MBA path
Yes but I looked at some participants profile and some of them were bain consultants etc, also you can just apply for the normal MA program without the support of the fellowship "mainly financial". I looked at MSF programs but still they are very constrained.
You need to tell us:
Thanks, to answer your questions:
1) I have been cranking for the past 7 years and would really like to take sometime off and learn about new things. I also want to get out of my part of the world and see how things work across the world. I know you may take these things for granted but having worked with lawyers/bankers in london, silicon valley and hong kong just made me aware of how much i am missing out on. There is only so much i can get through an internet connection and brief business travels. I never stopped reading, self developing etc but it was always something being done on the side amidst a quick life pace, i feel like hitting the pause button and dedicating a year to learning, meeting new people, living in a new place etc. Am I making sense to you?
2) I don't hate it, but let me try and shed some perspective. In my country not a lot of people are foreign educated, but just 5 years ago we had this surge of people going to H/S/W and coming back thinking they can change the world. Having worked with some of them before and after their travels, I wan't really impressed by how far they have come along. Not being condescending but these are smart, type A people and I guess I just expected more. The more I saw the more they felt cookie cutter to me, just like my buddies at McKinsey saying the same acronyms, and thinking in line with each other. So i thought Ok I want to maybe formalize my business education a little bit but I have interests in philosophy, law, politics, economics, etc and I need to find a program that would give me that.
@harveyspankster
Business school and management consultant firms certainly are susceptible to management fads and meaningless acryonyms...but that doesn't make the skills/knowledge as a whole useless. The reason McKinsey can come in for 3 weeks, and save a company $100MM is because the experienced managers/executives at firms lack these skills/knowledge despite their experience.
of course, I am not taking away from that. I am just saying it's not my area of interest. I am happy being a VC it actually satisfies my intellectual curiosity, always learning/reading/speaking to experts on new things and I want to take this to the next level by immersing myself in a dedicated learning experience where all i have to do all day long is read books, meet interesting people, and interact with change makers from different fields and get to know what they do, work on projects I would never find the time for etc. Just broaden my horizons really.
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