capstone [monday] - mentoring incoming mbas

This year, the Saïd Business School is introducing a "mentoring" scheme to incoming MBAs. I registered my interest, and indicated that I was willing to help up to five MBAs. I thought that other (prospective) students might also find this advice useful, so I've posted it below:

Welcome to Oxford! Congratulations on getting accepted into the MBA program. I'm your MBA mentor. I just arrived in Oxford this morning, as our concluding 'Capstone' course began today, and ends with graduation on Saturday.

This past year was one of the best experiences of my life! As a member of Exeter College, I was 32 y/o when I started the program. It was actually my second time here, as I studied abroad at Oxford during my junior year at SUNY Stony Brook. I'm also engaged to be married this October, but my fiancée stayed in New York to work while I completed my MBA. I would say that half of the MBAs bring their spouses, and the other half do not.

Before coming to Oxford I worked as a FINRA Registered Principal (Series 7, 24) at Citigroup Smith Barney, where as a financial advisor, I constructed investment portfolios for retail clients. I had also owned my own coffee shop in New Jersey, and spent several years during college managing my brother's chain of cafes in the Hamptons.

I also serve on the Board for the Microfinance Club of New York, and teach financial literacy to high school students. We have a very diverse MBA class, but I think that in general, you will find that all the MBAs accepted have the following characteristics: entrepreneurial background (or ambitions), leadership, and volunteer work.

Homework assignment:

Yes, in addition to Tomo Suzuki's Financial Accounting assignment, I'm giving you some additional homework. Many incoming MBAs have already found my blog on the web: http://justinbelkin.blogspot.com. I've also linked to Andrew Bergbaum's blog (06'-'07), which I think is terrific. For either blog, I suggest starting your reading in August, and work your way forward, so that you'll get the most applicable information to your current situation first. For example, you'll learn about getting a bank-account and cell phone in my 'pre-MBA' and 'Michaelmas' term blog entries, whereas issues such as electives and the Strategic Consulting Project, only become relevant during later terms.

In conclusion, welcome to Oxford. Enjoy your time here, because it will go fast. This email was 'heavy' on biography, because this way you'll know how I fit into your life, and how I might be of better help to you. I encourage you to email me questions at: justinbelkin@hotmail.com.

I'll leave you with some good parting advice that I received when I started my MBA:

(1) Essentially, you'll never need to leave SBS. You'll probably live nearby, plus SBS serves three meals daily, and they have a library, and showers! Knowing this, trust me...make an effort EARLY ON to get involved with your College by: playing sports, attending bops, and dining "in-hall."

(2) What's the purpose of an MBA? Yes, it's true that you're here to learn new skills, to learn how to work under pressure, etc. I think that more importantly, however, is that you're here to network with a group of bright and ambitious classmates. At the Turf tavern, there's a sign that commemorates how an Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke (and former Oxford student), drank 2 1/2 pints of beer in 11 seconds. Go out and have fun; you never know what position you and your classmates may one day rise to.

PS: On that note, out of 238 MBAs in 2009-10, I hold the record for having invited 120 MBAs to dinner at Exeter College at a cost of £5 per person. One of my friends was close behind me with 80 invitations. Dining 2nd Hall in College is the least expensive and most sumptuous 3-course meal served in the most idyllic setting. If dinner is too expensive, then invite your friends on the weekend to brunch in College for about £2 each. Mmmm...delicious full English breakfast. Take advantage of this subsidy, and make some new friends, too.

(3) Business school is a good lesson for life. No one will just give you what your heart desires, rather you have to go out and get what you want. Career Services will not offer you a job. No one will make sure that you squeeze every experience out of Oxford as possible. This is all up to you. So, come to Oxford with a plan.

(4) You can only do two out of three things well: grades, social life, sports. No one has accomplished all three. For example, the students who made Dean's List were also voted as having spent the most time in the library. There is indeed a correlation. But if you're spending all the time in the library, then you're also not waking up at 5am to go rowing. And if you're rowing that early, then you're probably not partying until 1am at Fuzzy Ducks in Cowley either. You can begin to see the tradeoffs, right? Make your choice, and be comfortable with it.

(5) Let's face it, many people choose Oxford because of the great "sweatshirt equity" (name brand). Few schools, in fact, are more famous and well known than the elite top four universities in the world (in chronological order): Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Yale. Congratulations for having been accepted to at least one of these schools. It is now your responsibility to represent Oxford well. Start a blog, run for student politics/OBN/SIG, and dress/speak professionally when recruiters come visiting. PS: I'm involved with the New York OBA chapter, and I'll be helping running the table at the September NYC MBA World Tour. Do the same in your country.

(6) Yes, £36,000 for tuition and college fees is a lot of money. There are two ways of looking at this. Some take the short-term perspective: they attend 17 classes a year that meet 3 hours per week for 8 weeks, which means that 408 hours are spent in class. When divided by total tuition, you are paying approximately £88 per an hour of instruction. So, why would anyone miss a class!? On the other hand, someone with a long-time horizon might say: they plan to live until age 90, and are currently 30 y/o, therefore they have 60 years to go. When multiplied by 365 days a year you discover that you have 21,900 left to live; pretty morbid. This calculation means that you pay about £1.64 per day for the rest of your day for the right to call yourself an Oxford graduate whether you attend class, or skip class to attend Wimbledon, or the Royal Ascot horse race. That's less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks each day; just think of the silly things we spend money on. Regardless of your approach and time-horizon, make the most of your time here.

hilary [trek]: part 1, new york

Certainly one of the highlights of the Oxford MBA is the global Treks that take place in April between Hilary and Trinity terms. This year the Oxford SBS Alumni Relations Office recognized ten different Treks. They included China (Hong Kong & Shanghai), Geneva, Germany, India, Japan, Middle East, New York/Boston, Nigeria/Ghana, Silicon Valley, and Spain. Although students organize these Treks, they are supported by both the Alumni Office and the Careers Office. In fact, the New York/Boston Trek that I organized was of such strategic importance that both the Careers director and the Alumni director attended. Well, technically, the Alumni director's flight was cancelled due to the volcanic eruption in Iceland, but still...these Treks are big events!

Any Oxford MBAs interested in "pitching" a Trek next year will typically face a deadline on the second-to-last Friday in January (i.e. Friday, January 22, 2010). During the following week, students actually pitch their Trek ideas with the winners being announced the following Monday (i.e. Monday, February 1, 2010). By this point, you should have already identified a team to help you, a list of students who have displayed interest in attending the Trek, and a list of companies that you are targeting.

Your Trek team will be given 30-minutes to pitch the proposal to a committee consisting of at least the Alumni and Careers directors. At this point, the New York/Boston Trek had "indications of interest" by email from 50 MBA students, of which, ultimately 12 attended the Trek. We had also compiled a 5 slide PowerPoint deck, which identified the dates of the Trek, as well as the flight, hotel, and estimated budget. Of the 15 companies that we had originally identified, we wound up seeing 10 of them, which is a pretty strong success rate. This year all 10 Treks were approved, and collectively over 150 of the 243 students in the 2009/10 class visited 100 companies. Hopefully, next year will be as strong - if not stronger!

Most people flew-in to New York (JFK airport) the weekend before our Trek started. Many people stayed with friends or family to save money. It appears that everyone knows someone in NYC! Those who stayed in a hotel chose "The Pod Hotel" in midtown Manhattan for about $75 each per/night (assumes sharing a room). You can book online, or call them at (212) 355-0300 (info@thepodhotel.com). I think that the best deal they offer is an en-suite room with two twin-sized beds, which for some reason can only be booked over the telephone, not over the Internet. We just missed our Columbia MBA counterparts this trip, but ideally next year we'll able to organize a night-out, or a brunch, to share our "case-study" war-stories.

We tried to cluster our company visits together. For example, on Monday we stayed downtown and visited Citigroup at 388 Greenwich Street, and then Deutsche Bank at 60 Wall Street. The next two days were spent largely in midtown. On Tuesday we visited CBRichardEllis, Credit Suisse, and Barclays Capital. We finished in New York on Wednesday by seeing Sanford Bernstein, SecondMarket, and Pfizer. Similarly, next year's Trekkers should consider visiting no more than three companies each day.

It would be unfair to choose favorites, but suffice to say that ALL of ours hosts had put a considerable amount of time and effort into our visit, and we could not be more grateful. Learning about how the commercial real estate market in New York is structured, and how absorption rates may presage an economic turnaround was absolutely mind-blowing. Other companies were saddled with the Herculean task of finding buyers for hundreds of billions worth of assets. One company shared with us that they knew exactly where every oil tanker in the world was at anyone given point in time by cross-referencing insurance records with maritime weather reporting. Bright people!

Still others spoke to us about the intersection of finance and social welfare through microfinance. Meanwhile a bunch of young and talented hot-shots are fastidiously creating new markets around the world for trading illiquid assets. I wonder if I could buy a PPM (private placement memorandum) in their company through their own trading architecture - that would be interesting!? Finally, the last company on our New York trek brought out an impressive line of managers who deftly answered our questions regarding the effect of Obamacare on the healthcare industry, and how pharma companies compete for market share in emerging markets that are already saturated with generic drugs.

Needless to say, this New York Trek was a real treat for all of us. We are eternally grateful to our kind and generous hosts. We trust that they were sufficiently impressed with us, too, so that they will be willing to meet with next year's Oxford MBA class!