We're #1!!!

Yesterday the Business Week rankings for the top Business school were announced, and we came out on top for the first time ever! This is pretty significant because the BW rankings are the #1 authority on the quality of b-schools for many. The rankings only come out every other year so I can relish in this accomplishment during the rest of my tenure in school.

The school set up a live feed of the announcement yesterday so I decided to stop by and check it out. I walked into the student lounge and saw a movie screen which displayed what looked like a chat room. There were introductions and such, and then they started revealing the schools beginning at number 30. For the first 20, they were revealed in groups of five with about a one minute pause between each grouping. The crowd in the student lounge didn't have much of a reaction for the unveilings, until they showed number 10 - Columbia. That got a few cheers from the audience. Then, the top 9 were unveiled one by one with what felt like significant time between each posting.

9 - Duke (No response from the audience in the lounge)

8 - Berkeley (Haas) (Once again, not much of a response)

7 - MIT (pretty quit)

6 - Stanford (The crowd let out a big 'Ooooo' as if we were saying 'Ooooh, they ended up being kinda low')

5 - Michigan (Not much crowd reaction)

4 - Harvard (Lots of claps in the room because, well, doesn't everyone want to beat Harvard?)

3 - Kellogg (Many people started cheering for two reasons... Kellogg was #1 last time, so this now freed up that slot, and, they are our rival city school so, we want to trump them whenever we have a chance)

2 - Wharton (Of course this caused the biggest cheer of all)

1 - For the first time - Chicago!

But you know… I knew this would happen. About two weeks ago I was walking down the steps in our Hyde Park center campus and saw this guy, Thomas, looking over the railing at nothing. I then looked down and noticed photographers. I was all "Thomas, what is going on?" and he replied "This is Business Week, they are taking pictures today." And yes, they stayed on campus allll day. True, the probably went to all of the top 10 schools to take pictures, but, as soon as I saw them I had a gut feeling.

In other news, we had our fist snow in Chicago yesterday. It was only October 12! However, the weather experts, whoever they are, are predicting a mild winter this year. We'll see about that.

National Black

Last weekend I was in Atlanta for the National Black MBA conference. It is a yearly conference organized by the National Black MBA Association which is part leadership institute, part career fair, and part networking event. I went down for the career fair and to meet up with MBA students from other schools who I have met over the past few years. Overall, the conference was worthwhile. I was able to meet the folks at American Express (for those of you how don't know, I am an American Express Diversity Fellow) and make contacts from other companies represented at the career fair. I was also able to see many of my friends from other MBA programs. There were a few pleasant surprises as well.... I randomly ran into a friend whom I hadn't talked to in about a year, and ran into a guy I used to know at IBM who I hadn't talked to in almost two years. Honestly, I didn't think I would ever see either of them again, but, you never know when life will have you cross paths with others from your past. Oh, and I also met one of my old college roommate’s former co-workers. That was random.

We'll see the effects of my visit to Atlanta later this year when the internship interview process is in full effect. I hope the contacts I made over the weekend will prove beneficial during that time.

In other news, nothing big is going on. Just getting in the swing of things with classes. We only started class about two weeks ago. The thing that stinks is I'm already a little bit behind! Being in Atlanta set me back a bit, but, I have the rest of this week to catch up on everything.