Personal Update

21May09

I passed the exam, paid my fee, and now I can insert a jumble of letters after my name. For whatever reason, I felt a lot more confident about the level 2 exam. Though I was never 100% sure that I was going to pass, I was actually less excited when I got my level 2 results relative to level 1.

People still look at me and think “software guy”. It’s frustrating. I recently worked with a client who, similarly, had responsibility for business applications and IT decisions, and had completed CAIA certification around the time of its inception. He actually appeared to be dead set on leaving the industry completely. I guess I’m saying that in the end, it isn’t an indicator of much.

Still thinking about business school. I had an opportunity to visit Kellogg and Chicago Booth the other month. Booth was awful. Really. The students were snobby.  The fancy new b-school building was really not that impressive on the inside.  The few administrators I met proudly proclaimed that the school was changing nothing in the wake of the recession. That was disturbing. From an admissions standpoint, they talked a lot about how “fit” was important. I left feeling like that school was a very bad fit for me.

My experience at Kellogg couldn’t have been more different. The students were friendly and humble. I didn’t deal with hardly any admissions people. Everyone seemed pretty engaged in what was happening to the economy. Most important, however, was the other potential students. When I go to info sessions, the thing that turns me off the most about business schools is the other prospective students. They reek of hollow ambition. They stink of outsize expectations.

The prospective students that I met at Kellogg, though, felt like people with whom I would actually want to be friends. It could have been coincidence, but it has definitely been the most striking thing about any school that I have visited.

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Tags: business school, CAIA, Chicago Booth, kellogg