My Chicago GSB Experience

Chicago was very high in my list before I started my research on b-schools. The intellectual rigor and the list of nobel laureates impressed me. Today, it is no longer my top-choice.

School Visit: The Chicago GSB was the first campus I visited. I am not a connosieur of architecture but even I realized that the Hyde Park campus was special. The Winter garden and the accessibility to students, teachers, classrooms and other facilities were neat.
I attended Professor Waverely Deutsch's "Small Business Entrepreneurship" class. Students were making presentations about business plans and the professor acted as the VC giving critical feedback. One of the three business plans seemed like a viable business strategy to me. Then they did a case-study of "Cranium": a board game invented by some Microsoft developers. It was a very informative discussion but I was a little surprised by the anti-microsoft undercurrent that seemed to pervade the discussion. At the end of the class, the Microsoft employee in me, couldn't help but voice my opinion about the misplaced anti-Microsoft sentiment.
I did get a sense that students were very focussed on getting that "finance" job after school. The emphasis seemed to be less on the b-school experience and more on finding a great job.

Application: I used my Wharton essay 1 as a starting point for the GSB essay. Since the school really focuses on "Why Chicago" I decided to invest the 500 extra words that I had to make this point. The "One day in the life of someone else" was probably the essay I enjoyed writing the most.

Interview: This was a real shocker to me.
I interviewed on campus so that I could meet with some of the students working in the non-profit clubs before the interivew. Unfortunately, because of scheduling problems and horrible SPRINT reception in the campus, I couldn't do so. (I have switched to Verizon :))
The person who interviewed me seemed a little .... ummm ..... mean. I got the impression that he was not interested in my answers. He interrrupted me several times and would snub me every 2-3 minutes. It seemed like he did not believe my answers and didn't give me a chance to clarify. 20 minutes into the interview, I was like .."what the @##$ is going on". Shouldn't I be doing 80% of the talking !! Having conducted over 100 interviews myself, I thought it was insulting and disrespectful.
Anyway, I made sure I made my points about "why I liked Chicago" and "why I think my career plans make sense" before leaving the room. I was happy that I managed to make my point clearly without getting mad or becoming incoherent. Before leaving the school, I informed one of the Admissions Committe members of my "surprising" interview experience.

I am still not sure how I got into Chicago given my horrid interview. Maybe the interview was an aberration. Maybe not all students are like my interviewer. But at this point in time, I do not see myself accepting the GSB offer.