Make Up Your Mind Already!

By now you have read my road trip story contained in February and March's tales. If not, stop reading and check them out. Then come back and resume reading. I recognize my blog may violate a cardinal blog rule and not follow a chronological order. Through the inevitable circumstances of life this blog has subscribed the the Quentin Tarrantino or the comic book origin issue school of writing.

My initial rankings after reading the brochure-ware. Stanford was number one. My visit reinforced this, where every student I met was impressive. Unfortunately, I couldn't get into the door to wow them with my bullshit. Washington was number two. It was strong in technology and entrepreneurialism. And a good gap after UW was UC Irvine and Davis, tied for third. Irvine lacked the entrepreneurial focus and Davis was a bit removed from Silicon Valley.

My first hint that UCI was a bit different was the fact that they contacted my one week after I filed my application to schedule an interview. I filed my application with UW two weeks before UCI, but here they are contacting me. I phoned UCI to ask if I should wait for my trip to interview in person or conduct a phone interview as soon as possible. The friendly receptionist told me that it was better to interview as soon as possible and that a phone interview is considered normal. She also told me to contact her directly and she would ensure that I had a great visit. All in all a pleasant first introduction into the school.

I scheduled the phone interview and it occurred two weeks after I filed my application. My interviewer was very friendly, asked the standard questions, and then we simply talked about life in the OC and new music. It was a very enjoyable call, but, as this was my first interview, I had no idea where I stood. Even more so, she took away three action items of questions that she would answer for me. The next day was an email from her telling me that I would be a great addition to any school and detailed answers to my questions. Whenever I had a follow up question, she would respond the next day with a detailed answer. An admissions department dedicated to make the admissions process as easy as possible; I began to mistakenly think this was the norm for all business schools.

It gets better - one week after the interview, UCI responded by accepting me and offering a scholarship. The problem is that they are too efficient. They have evaluated and responded to my application while the other schools have yet to look at it. Well, you may say that the other schools have more applicants. Not so, according to the recently released US News Business School rankings. According to US news, in the previous application year UW received 564 full time applications, UCI received 600 full time applications, and UC Davis recieved 273 full time applications. Added to that I believe UW has a bigger Admissions staff than UCI. Other schools take note, UCI understands customer service.

UCI admissions customer service ties into one of the points of this post that UCI is shooting up the rankings. As I noted earlier, UCI was a distant third after UW. This year they moved up 11 spots to a tie for 38 (while UW droped 10 to 29). They are now slightly above UW in my rankings. Why is that? There appears to be an overall school vision to be a top U.S. business school. UCI's new dean appears to be driving this goal. Last year they scored a major endowment for the school in return for naming rights. They are one of the leading US business schools in integrating information technology into the classroom and into the curriculum. The Wall Street Journal recently ranked UCI #4 for Information Technology MBA programs. UCI's aggressive vision is a message that the organization clearly is on board with. The admissions department is customer service focused and the careers office makes great ties with corporate recruiters. My gut tells me this program has high aspirations. And who doesn't like someone that swings for the fences?

Now, compare UCI's approach to UW's. Their admissions office took almost two full months to ask me to interview (and that was after I requested for them to speed up the process to match with my scheduled trip). Nearly every request takes at minimum a few days to respond (if at all) and their responses are always curt. They make me feel like I am a pain in the ass, not a valued recruit. At my interview, they were over ten minutes late and when the interviewer came out to meet me, she turned away from me to do another task. Maybe I am overcritical, but working with small businesses, customer services wins. She should have immediately went to me, appologized, then asked for me to wait a minute so she could complete that task before the interview. Their response will not be made until April 5 (a month after the interview) and they will not be able to let me know about scholarships until three weeks after that! There is a big difference here.

This ties into my impression that there is no overall aggressive vision for UW. It appears that they are satisfied being the best business school in northwest United States. Their facilities are very dilapidated. I know they are trying to raise money to build a new building, but they are still far off what is needed. The admissions office is not recruit-focused. I am not making a commentary on the faculty or students - all students I met at UW were impressive, I just think there is a lack of clear leadership at UW.

Now, these impressions were the start of my investigation and prompted me to think the ranking would be closer than I first thought. Then, I addressed the entrepreneurial focus by examining the class descriptions of all offered classes. While UW has some interesting courses like Software Entrepreneurialism and Marketing for Entrepreneurs, UCI had more classes that I was interested in. In fact it could be argued that a focus on entrepreneurialism is overrated, because my experience tells me that entrepreneurism is a state of mind and a hunger to make things happen. Can this really be taught? I can take all of UCI's cutting edge IT classes and other classes that fully use available technology and adapt it to new venture.

So school vision and cutting edge technology is moving UCI ahead of UW. What are the drawbacks? Well, Seattle is a beautiful city that oozes the creativity and academics that excite me. Orange County... meh. Orange county housing prices are 50% higher than Seattle. Also, I estimate that Orange County has a 30% cost premium over Seattle. That means any income I make in Orange County will immediately face a 30% reduction due to housing, taxes, and other costs of living in Orange County, California versus the same amount earned in Seattle. When you consider that average starting salaries are similar for UCI and UW, this means a lot to a young family.

On the other hand is a 30% premium worth living in a "Carribean Resort"-like area? No doubt the weather is much better in the OC. My wife loves the sun. I am slowly going crazy. If you read this whole spiel, I think you can see my predicament.

Well, UW gives its acceptances on April 5th (They generally mail it, but I had to beg that they email it to me) and UCI needs an answer by April 15th. My decision should be made by next Friday. Feel free to post any thoughts or suggestions. Reading other peoples ideas will stop my mind from running around in circles. Till next week...