Entrepreneur Magazine, in conjunction with the Princeton Review, recently announced the MBA @ Bowling Green as one of the top 15 MBA programs in the Accounting category of their Student Opinion Honors for Business Schools list. The list was created by the Princeton Review’s survey of over 19,000 current MBA students. We are proud to be recognized in the accounting area and look forward to being ranked as high in the other categories in the years to come.

Today, I received an unexpected wake-up call in the form of a phone call.  On Sunday, I had submitted a resume and cover letter for an internship opportunity at a local company.  Well, today (just two days later) a company human resources representative called and left me a message to call her back.  Silly me, I tried to return the call during a break in my GA today.  Instead of setting up an appointment time to talk, the representative immediately began firing questions in my direction.  Like I said in a post on February 17, it is critical for people to know themselves and be able to use examples to answer questions rather than simply answering the questions with short answers that lack details.  Since I did not take the time to ‘warm up’ before the call, I provided answers in a choppy, unsmooth, and unimpressive manner. 

The representative did tell me that she will contact candidates tomorrow for interviews on Thursday.  Unfortunately, I may have filtered myself out of the competition with this screening/pre-interview phone call.  Please let this be a lesson to all of you out there: do not just prepare for interviews.  Remember to be prepared for any and all communication with prospective employers.  Failure to do so can be the difference between getting a call back to schedule an interview and having to call the employer back to learn about an already suspected rejection.

Good afternoon all!  Midterms are over, March Madness has begun, and springtime is right around the corner.  Needless to say, I am excited!  Thankfully, I have survived the Midterm rush and look forward to finishing strongly this semester.  Today, one class was canceled because a professor is out-of-town.  However, my classmates in Quantitative Analysis and one of the Accounting classes have tests today and tomorrow, so best of luck to them! 

In the meantime, I attended a GradSTEP meeting this morning and will stop by the student union again briefly for the Summer Job Fair.  For those of you not familiar with GradSTEP, GradSTEP is a series of educational and informational training sessions for Graduate Assistants that is held prior to the start of the assistantship assignments.  More information can be found at http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/gradstep/.  As for summer employment, I have been pursuing internship opportunities.  However, with the struggling economy and a sagging job market, I have expanded my horizon to non-internship options as well.  Wish me luck!

As for the prospective students out there, please keep in touch with the GEPB Office regarding the application process.  Again, feel free to ask us any questions you may have about the MBA program, life in Bowling Green, the business world, and so on.  Best of luck to you!

The spring semester is in full force, and as we move on through our MBA program, I’m really noticing how the pieces fall together.  This semester, it seems that our classes are very intertwined and I’m often learning about topics simultaneously in two classes.  For example, in our finance class we are learning about the time value of money, and some specific methods of discounting cash flows…in our quantitative analysis class with Dr. Rump we are building linear programs to solve cash flow problems where we maximize our NPV.  I’m really enjoying learning about the various topics because it shows us the big picture.  In my undergraduate studies, I was an accounting major, so I spend my days taking managerial accounting, tax, and estate planning.  Once I got a job post graduation as an accountant at a CPA firm, it was sometimes a struggle to see how the different areas of business come together so I’m grateful that we are seeing this in our program. 

On another tangent, Spring break is only a few days away, and with that the stress level is high.  I have a group presentation on Tuesday, and I often have anxiety for days prior to speaking in public.  I know that this is even more reason for me to practice speaking so I can get more comfortable.  After the presentation, there’s an exam in Operations Management on Wednesday, and a Finance exam on Thursday.  It’s going to be a tough week for me, but I know that vacation is just around the corner, and I’m excited to spend a week somewhere a little warmer!

Time is flying by, as it is now the month of March.  In a couple weeks, men’s and women’s college basketball will be celebrating “March Madness” in the form of the NCAA Final Four Tournaments and NIT/WNIT competitions.

In the meantime, the full-time MBA program is ‘celebrating’ (not really) midterm exam week.  Thankfully, I only have 2 midterm exams, 1 in Operations Management and 1 in Finance.  Still, these exams seem to be a couple formidable challenges for my classmates and me.  Wish us luck!