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What to Expect From Your Tech MBA Summer

One of the most unique parts of the Tech MBA is the summer semester – there are no other students on campus, you get to bond with your cohort, and start your journey as an MBA. If you’re wondering what a typical day in the life of a Tech MBA student in the summer looks like, it’s a very busy but exciting time! It’s also a great transition from working into school, since your schedule is more like a 9-5 working day. Here’s an example of what a typical day might look like:

  • 8am – 9am: Commute from Brooklyn to campus
  • 9am – 11:50am: Class 1: Economics
  • 11:50am – 12:30pm: Lunch in the park with friends
  • 12:30pm – 1:30pm: Catch up on reading in the student lounge
  • 1:30pm – 4:20pm: Class 2: Leadership
  • 4:20-6:00pm: Work on assignments
  • 6:00pm: Head home or grab dinner/drinks with Stern friends

Classes you will take: The summer is all about Core classes, and they’re in a special format to accommodate for taking everything over the summer. You’ll take Economics, Leadership, Accounting, Marketing, Communications, and many more courses, but in essence are taking most of the core curriculum that MBA1s take in their first year. The benefits of this are that professors distill down their content to the most important information, and you get a ‘greatest hits’ experience. The challenge can be time management because you need to make time for homework in the evenings and on the weekend. One great part is that everyone is in the same courses, so it’s easy to lean on each other for support.

How to take advantage of the summer in NYC: Since everyone is more or less on the same schedule, it means you’ll get to spend many of your days together during the week! It’s a great time to get outside in Washington Square Park to study or hang out, and check out all of the amazing lunch spots near campus. My personal favorite is Court Street Grocers. Our cohort did lots of fun summer activities, including a lobster boat cruise in Manhattan and outdoor rock climbing in Brooklyn.

What I wish I had done looking back: Time management can be difficult during the summer, because there are so many classes packed into a short period. The best way to manage for me was to block off certain nights or weekends where I would dedicate myself to getting work for the week done. I also used a program called Trello to make a board with tickets for every assignment that I could group by deadline or priority, which helped me make sure I knew what was coming up. Our cohort also made a #homework channel on Slack, and someone volunteered to post assignments each Monday. Like I said – lean on one another!

The summer is a really amazing time, and was my favorite part of the whole program! For those of you about to start the program, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

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Moving to NYC for the first time?

One of the most exciting parts of the Stern Tech MBA program is the opportunity to live and be a student in Manhattan! However, it can be daunting to think about moving to one of the most well known cities in the world. It is quite natural to feel intimidated, or even unsure, about making this kind of move. I moved to New York City from Boston in 2016, and while I had a network of friends from college already living here, I remember feeling overwhelmed by the apartment search process. There are so many neighborhoods and options, and it felt difficult to determine which apartments would be a good fit. 

I used resources like Street Easy and The Listings Project to look for apartments and eventually found a great spot in Williamsburg, which is a neighborhood in Brooklyn. I have lived in Brooklyn ever since, and found it easy to commute to Manhattan for class. If you aren’t a fan of waking up earlier for those 9am classes, it might make sense to look at housing in the West Village, Noho, or Soho to be able to walk to class, but for me it takes about 30-40 minutes via direct train to get to campus. There are different options for looking at housing during your time at school. NYU offers student housing, which is very close to campus. Pricing wise, the student housing might not be much cheaper, so many students decide to look for apartments on their own. Many people in our class live together after meeting online or at pre-MBA events. My classmates live ALL over the city, in Manhattan, The Bronx, Brooklyn, and even New Jersey. New York City is on a speedier rental cycle, so most apartments go on the market about one month prior to the move in date. At first this worried me, but once I started searching, I realized there were so many options it didn’t make much of a difference. It’s important to have documentation like your admission letter, bank and tax statements, and prior landlord information on hand when you are looking, because the process can move quite quickly. Remember that there is no wrong neighborhood to live in!

New York City has so much to offer. I am constantly reading about new restaurants on The Infatuation, and starting the MBA really opened me up to new spots, cultures, and amazingly fun activities with my new classmates. Even as someone who had been living in the city for quite some time, it was incredible to connect with classmates and have tons of fun in a city where so many people were just moving to and making the most of. And remember, a home can be whatever you need it to be, so once you settle into your student routine, you will be able to control your pace and make plenty of time for rest and recharge. 

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Why I Chose Stern’s Tech MBA Program

I always hoped I might go to business school, but five years into working, that goal felt more and more overwhelming. I didn’t see a world in which I would be willing to take two years away from my career trajectory and feel like the ends justifies the means. Working in the tech industry where new programs, technologies, and companies are launched daily, taking two years away from the hustle felt impossible.

Once I started to look into different programs, knowing I wanted to stay in New York City, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the Tech MBA program at Stern. At first I thought this must be too good to be true – how could one complete a full MBA program in just one year? Upon speaking to current students in the program, I grew more and more excited about the opportunity to complete an MBA in a year, within my specialized industry, and to join a cohort of students who share the same passion and commitment to the tech industry. 

I’d like to tell you about a few components of the program that make it special, and that have benefited me throughout the experience. First, spending one consolidated year in school felt like the right choice, because I would need to be very intentional about the classes I took and how I spent my time with clubs and social activities. I have really learned in to the experience – it flies by so quickly! 

Next, I wanted the option to take very technical courses and strengthen my product management acumen. I had always told myself I would learn how to code in my free time, but having the access to a blended business and technology core has helped me realize this goal. Taking classes like Dealing with Data, Data Science for Business, and Foundations of Mobile Networks have allowed me to learn how to code in Python, run data models in Weka, and understand the basics of network connectivity. We even had a session about UX design and a workshop on Figma, which I had always been too intimidated to learn in the past!

Finally, I was also attracted to the small class size of the cohort for the Tech MBA. While a typical MBA class might have up to one thousand students, I am really pleased that my Tech MBA cohort has fifty diverse, smart, and emotionally intelligent students. Over the summer, we were one of the only student groups on campus, and took all of our core classes together. This helped foster an amazing bond between the small cohort, and created strong, genuine friendships. We have taken East River boat cruises, planned Friendsgiving dinners, attended concerts, and hosted holiday dinner parties. I felt like I already had a community after living in New York for many years, but can say definitively that the cohort students from across the country and the world have become lifelong friends and future business partners. 

I can’t recommend the Tech MBA program enough – please get in touch if you’d like to hear about my experience further!

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My Favorite Course This Semester: Brand Strategy

There are so many wonderful courses at Stern that it can feel overwhelming to select elective classes each semester. Because the Tech MBA has put together a robust curriculum that focuses on both business and technical core classes, my hope for elective courses has been that they will be fun, interesting, and help sharpen on specific skill or knowledge area that I have not previously had experience with. For example, I am interested in sustainability and “foodtech,” so I am taking Social Entrepreneurship in Sustainable Food Business with Professor Hans Taparia.

When I was thinking about my prior role as a Product Manager, and some of the skills that I wanted to develop, I realized that I have not had much exposure to marketing. Specifically, I was interested in branding, and the way in which graphic design, strategy and positioning can come together to change the way a brand is perceived in the market, and the emotional impact it has on consumers. I decided to take Brand Strategy with Professor Gormley, and it has turned out to be my favorite course this semester. When I read the first line of her syllabus, I knew I had made the right choice. “Who says you can’t get real world experience in the classroom? Fran Gormley has worked in the Branding business for three decades and can teach you how to create Branding ideas that can propel a business forward.”

Before beginning at Stern, I was advised to take evening electives whenever possible because it would mean that the course was taught by a “practitioner,” or a professor who is currently working for another organization in the field, as opposed to professors who are lifelong academics. I think this is so important when looking to a subject like branding, because learning from a professor who is currently running her own branding agency ensures you are learning the latest and greatest standards from the industry.

Professor Gormley is a great lecturer, and she structures the class so that she delivers course content for half of the session, and then a guest speaker comes in to talk with the class for the latter half of the class. We have heard from executives across many different industries and branding agencies, specifically at PayPal, Fekkai, Edelman, Wolff Olins, and Interbrand. My favorite speaker so far was Frédéric Fekkai, a legendary hair stylist turned businessman, who spoke about his company Fekkai, and the various transitions it has made over the years. Frédéric spoke about the opportunity he had to sell his company, and eventually buy it back, and it was crazy to hear the story of the shampoo I had in my very own shower at home in Brooklyn! Professor Gormley also gives various case study lectures about the projects she has worked on across her career, making it very applicable to see the before and after of the branding work she has done. This class takes place on Tuesday evenings, but the time flies by, and I look forward to hearing from Professor Gormley and whoever she has in store for us each week. We even are working on a semester long project to rebrand a company of our choosing. I can’t recommend this class enough!