About Darden

gobeyond

以下是引用小绒球在2006-12-5 14:13:00的发言：

小妹不才，没看出你想论证什么。

Darden招年轻教授，"only because"年轻教授喜欢research。怎么看像是开养牛的。苏格兰奶牛产奶多，我们多养点。一个商学院的研究靠招几个年轻教授能起色，简直就是笑话。

商学院的教授每年教个几门课。一个term才2个多月，剩下的时间出不了research，真不知道在干嘛。phd毕业生们与其在top10里拼死拼活争取tenure，还不如去darden养老去。

世界上没有绝对的good和great。没有参照系，重复的good,great根本就没有意义。

马甲小mm，york的point是潜在的。我来把它说明确些吧。

美国的教授system就是如此，年轻教授进入学校，为了要达到tenure，必须达到系里对research paper publication上的要求。这是将来评估他们是否能拿到tenure的一个重要标准。任何学校都是以tenure来作为一种刺激，促进教授们继续在科研领域里面做出新的成绩来。而一个系里面的教授如果都是tenure了，相对生活安逸，publication量少就是由此而起。这一点，也比较容易理解。所以，招入年轻教授无疑是新鲜血液。 而一些很N的学校，拿tenure的要求高，考察时间更长，用来不停鞭策教授们努力做好科研。而美国各项grant，基本都是力求鼓励新生事物的，年轻教授，有潜力的，就更容易拿到grants。当然，除了一些超级N人，本身sitting in several study groups, 或者自己是院士啦，某领域NN啦，就不同了。

另外，你为啥那么看不上Darden呢？学校都有好有坏的么。更何况，学校好坏和个人发展还不是完全一致的一件事情。在我看来，Darden的排名不算低的，而且一定有它独特的一面让其获得这个排名。没什么好争的。本贴lz发表了一些对Darden的看法，我觉得有些观点有一定的道理，虽然用词过于情绪化了些，其实根本不用那么激动嘛。

做research不是那么容易的。我相信Darden这样的学校给tenure一定是比较谨慎的。谈什么养老之说，你是不是冒犯了很多辛苦做research的朋友们了？每个PhD学生对自己都有一个定位，各人选择一种生活方式么，找一个自己的位置。申请也是一样，HBS,Wharton,stanford是比较N，每个人都进得去吗？进去的都能学好吗？学好的将来都发展好吗？

其实发表对一个学校好坏的言论，不至于那么personal和情绪化吧。最多这学校你不喜欢，别申请就是了。千万别说你是为了领导后来人少走弯路啊，因为你的comments不是那么fair的。太多个人情绪因素了。

airfight

给别人挑语法错误的办法实在无法认同。 很高兴看到这个讨论的后半部分出现较为理智的声音。

leehanb

Citigroupztc, thank you for your candid comments. I am a firm believer that only with free expression of opinions can people truly reveal the truth in this world. So thank you for this.

Let us put all the numbers aside since numbers can be interpreted in many different ways (I took one corporate law class at Darden and was surprised to learn that some seemingly objective facts can be so subjective when it comes to every individual’s interpretation). So I want share some of my own experience at Darden from a different angle and hope it is helpful to you, citigroupztc.

First I would say there is no perfect school. Darden has its own problems, but I still want to say my 2 years time at Darden is really worth the investment. Yes, of course it is because of the faculty and its case method. In the classroom, you never feel your thinking limited to a certain discipline. Everything is connected, and you constantly force yourself to break the silo thinking. For example, in finance class we talk about strategy. In marketing class we talk about operations and no one will stop you as long as you bring a valid point. I have seen so many “aha!” moments in our class because we discovered something great but hidden through the discussion ourselves. Just like in real business world, you can never tell for sure if a business problem is an operations or finance problem unless you step back to look at it from a very high level – in real business world all the things are intertwined.  That is why Darden has such a big fame on general management. Also I have to tell you the professors here are top notched. Many times I was like enjoying a Cirque Du Soleil show being led but without feeling indoctrinated – since we are the performers too. I think this is really the beauty of case method in a quality school. By the same token, Darden is not for everyone – I was told this on my first day at Darden. It asks constant independent thinking in a collective setting -- classroom. It is a pain initially for many people who were so used to being led to follow the dogmas.

MBA education at any school is not a magic wand. Let us be realistic on this. But I did feel the experience at Darden changed me. Besides the tools I acquired, the vision of looking at things differently (even for everyday life), the knowledge base, and the connections with many intelligent people are really the wealth I got from Darden. I recently met a bunch of alums in Shanghai all from different years and we felt the instant intimacy just because Darden is tough (no joke about this) and we are like a bunch of buddies who survived the same battleJ Citigroupztc, if you have not been to Darden for a class visit, you should do it. It is a quite an experience regardless what b-school you decided to go to. 

I understand people have all the liberty to express their own opinion here. Not speaking for my Darden fellows here, but I personally feel a little uncomfortable the way you commented on Chinese student’s language skill. Being a native mandarin speaker myself and having lived in the states long enough to see the social division due to the cultural difference and language barrier, I have full sympathy for my fellow Chinese students just coming to another country. It is not just at Darden. I feel fortunate for you for being able to have American college education at very young age and hence mastered a good English obviously (regardless of sisu1996’s hilarious comments), but I feel one should recognize the excellent calibers of many people at Darden who came from totally different country and thus occasionally babble in another language.  Indeed speaking a perfect language and being an effective communicator and thus an impactful business leader are two different matters. George Soros has grammas all the time whereas George Bush is a perfect English speakerJ
   

Obviously you have some hard feelings on Darden. I am not sure what happened between you and Darden. But if I can be of any help to address your confusions, please feel free to contact me at hanb06@darden.virginia.edu. If you want to talk to Dean Bruner, we can also help to connect if this will resolve your confusion toward Darden. And I am sure many of my Darden fellows are here to help not to beat you even though they seemed a bit defensive. After all we are all human beings especially when it comes to defending a school we consider sacred.  

Since you are a UVA alumnus and connected with Darden as well as the 3^rd U.S. president Thomas Jefferson, I would encourage you to do one thing – whenever you see problems in this messy and sometimes hopeless real world, please stand up and take the initiatives to do something to change it and make it better. In the ordinary world people call it courage, and in business world people call it -- leadership.

Sincerely wish you good luck wherever you end up going!

 

A Darden 06’ grad

[此贴子已经被作者于2006-12-7 10:18:57编辑过]

citigroupztc

The reason I started this post was to help you. Being a UVa undergrad myself, do you think I like to bash my own school? Darden is a good school, but it's just not the school that will open as many doors as other top MBA programs will. Being in the U.S. for over 6 years, I understand well enough what does make a difference for a college or MBA student: the school's prestige. Yes, many top companies do recruit at UVa, but not heavily. That means only the best of the best can get the offers. Even if you are good enough get the offers you want, you will be in a firm where Darden does not have a strong presense and you will face what you have to face... Many of you are good enough to get into Darden now. So why don't you wait a year or two, get promotion, salary raise, more responsibilities, and all other things that will help you get into a school with much higher reputation like Harvard, Wharton, Columbia, Kellogg, Chicago, etc.? Dear people, you are branding yourselves for life. Think and think really hard about it. The name of your school will be with you for the rest of your life and usually people have very different level of respect and expectation based on which school you went to. Many of you will eventually come back to China after all and your Darden brand name or alumini network will mean very little for you here, not even in 10 years (think how many MBAs Darden produces each year and how many Chinese are in each class). Dear people, I am bashing my own school to help you. Please think for yourself and make a sound judgement for your future. That's all I have to say to you, with my whole heart.

luckyl

Thank you guys!  It makes CD like a forum!

Sachem

Agree with citi.  Few people with self-respect will be too proud of being associated with UVA. 

Just
between UVA and Duke, the latter enjoys a better reputation as a whole,
though neither is comparable to Harvard, Stanford etc.  As a whole, Duke
is probably as good as those "easy Ivy" such as UPenn and Brown while
UVA is at least one notch down, hardly as good as the like of Michigan
and UCLA.

For the same reason, NYU Stern will never enjoy the
prestigue similiar to that of Columbia, even the education and location
are arguably same.

The only b-school that can sustain its own distinguished name from a so-so university is Kellogg.

[此贴子已经被作者于2006-12-11 1:22:03编辑过]

火箭

Dear people, I am bashing my own school to help you.

太感动了，啥也不说了，眼泪哗哗的流啊，借用一句台词与楼主共勉：

“一个在外漂泊多年的游子，毫无利己的动机，忍痛将自己母校踩在脚下，把所有中国MBA申请人的事业当作他自己的事业，这是什么精神？这是国际主义精神...”

gobeyond

以下是引用citigroupztc在2006-12-11 0:14:00的发言：
The reason I started this post was to help you. Being a UVa undergrad myself, do you think I like to bash my own school? Darden is a good school, but it's just not the school that will open as many doors as other top MBA programs will. Being in the U.S. for over 6 years, I understand well enough what does make a difference for a college or MBA student: the school's prestige. Yes, many top companies do recruit at UVa, but not heavily. That means only the best of the best can get the offers. Even if you are good enough get the offers you want, you will be in a firm where Darden does not have a strong presense and you will face what you have to face... Many of you are good enough to get into Darden now. So why don't you wait a year or two, get promotion, salary raise, more responsibilities, and all other things that will help you get into a school with much higher reputation like Harvard, Wharton, Columbia, Kellogg, Chicago, etc.? Dear people, you are branding yourselves for life. Think and think really hard about it. The name of your school will be with you for the rest of your life and usually people have very different level of respect and expectation based on which school you went to. Many of you will eventually come back to China after all and your Darden brand name or alumini network will mean very little for you here, not even in 10 years (think how many MBAs Darden produces each year and how many Chinese are in each class). Dear people, I am bashing my own school to help you. Please think for yourself and make a sound judgement for your future. That's all I have to say to you, with my whole heart.

hehe~ boy, you are funny.

You are saying that Darden doesn't deserve its reputation or rank, or you are saying that Darden's rank is not as good as Wharton? I believe most of the people on this forum already know the latter, so I guess we must argue about the first one.

I have no words to say any more. What I want to say have already been said. Because I believe the ranking system has its rule, which used as a reference by many people in the world. No matter how UVA's network is, you need to stand up in the workplace on your own feet. You compared UVA to top 10 schools, but why don't you compare UVA to those 15- schools? That'll be a more well-rounded way to look at your school, right? hehe~~

It seems you are encourage all the applicants to go for top 10 schools. But I'm wondering if you've ever heard the word "fit" ?

citigroupztc

Dear Go Beyond,
    When did I ever say Darden doesn't deserve its rank? Of course Darden deserves it rank and reputation. My point is its rank and reputation won't add as much value as other top programs will. Please do not distort my points to mislead people here.  Ok, you want to talk about "fit". Let me ask you a simple question: would you choose Darden over M7 if you think you are more "fit" with Darden, given you have offers from all of them? If your answer is yes, I am speechless again. If not, why not? Please give me a reason. And that reason should suffice to have you understand my points. Also, someone sent me a message to claim that my logic was interesting about everything who got into Darden now could possibly get into one of the top 10 programs in the future. Yes, I do believe so if you are that kind of people who would keep pushing yourselves to reach your career goal. However, I should have been very clear about one thing: if you have been very successful in your industry for a very long time (10+), an MBA from any school would not add much value. So as long as you think you are not doing what you want to do or believe an MBA will help you tremendously along the way, you should and deserve to go a top program. But again, you are paying 150K+ for your MBA education, and you want to go to the best school that you could possibly get into. Do not rush and pace yourself. You will get there eventually and it's all worth the wait.

gobeyond

以下是引用citigroupztc在2006-12-11 12:49:00的发言：
Dear Go Beyond,
   Ok, you want to talk about "fit". Let me ask you a simple question: would you choose Darden over M7 if you think you are more "fit" with Darden, given you have offers from all of them?

unfortunately, my answer is YES. I'm sorry my answer will make you speachless. But that's just my choice when I feel it's right for me.

I've been in U.S. for a while. Except for the similar ed. background as yours, I got my masters degree here too. Now is working.  At my age, I'll know that to balance things in my life is very important. I need to know what I want, and to get it. I don't care if it's the best in the world, as long as it's the "best" for me. Maybe you don't understand that, but I'm sure people who are older in this forum know what I'm saying. Sometimes, you just can't grab them all.

It's just still very wierd to me that u, who was a Darden student, strongly suggest people to look at Darden by only comparing Darden to those that ranked higher than it. As I said, it's worthwhile for people to look at anything from both sides. It's right that u said if people who can get into Wharton should go for it. I agree. Let them decide when is the timing, what is the best choice.

Pull some good things you feel about Darden during your 4-years study there, will u? I believe that'll make your comments more complete.