Year One: An Intimate Look Inside Harvard Business School, Source of the Most Coveted Advanced Degree in the World - Hardcover

Reid, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688128173 ISBN 13: 9780688128173

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1994

Synopsis

Enter the high-powered, high-pressure, high-caffeine world of the most prestigious MBA program in the country in this real-life account of a typical student's first year at Harvard Business School.
Robert Reid had spent two years working for a major consulting firm before enrolling at Harvard. Once there, what he found was a combination of country club-like settings and sometimes draconian academic traditions that combined to make Harvard's MBA one of the most sought-after and potentially lucrative advanced degrees in the world.
From the grueling application process and the anxiety surrounding classroom seating assignments, to the fierce jockeying for professors' attention and the bizarre courtship rituals leading businesses use to lure Harvard enrollees, Reid chronicles the heady and exhausting experiences that every HBS student faces. Along with his own story, Reid follows other students, showing us what HBS offers to its increasingly diverse student body: women, foreign students, the star performers, and the strugglers.
The threat of being challenged into class discussions by professors, the demanding daily preparation of case studies, and the occasional sharklike behavior of fellow students alternate with the pampering of a spalike athletic facility, meetings with legendary business world figures, and expensive nights on the town with corporate recruiters. HBS's highly paid and influential faculty appear in all their glory and humanity, surrounded by awed students and occasional controversy about their teaching styles and business theories - as well as their grading policies and uncompromising rules about class attendance.
For anyone interested or involved in the world of business, Year One gives you an inside look at the breeding grounds where many of America's most powerful and influential business figures get their real start.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Harvard Business School inevitably engenders interest and/or envy because it has trained legions of successful managers. Reid, a recent graduate, presents an insider's view of his grueling first year. While his description of the school's administration is hardly flattering, Reid depicts instructors as genuinely interested in educating students. Regrettably, though, the author never confronts whether earning the MBA is an intellectual experience or mere professional training leading to $1250-per-week summer internships and $80,000 salaries. Many students, he observes, seem preoccupied with grades, sitting in the "right" seats at lectures and handling instructors' "cold calls," polishing resumes, joining clubs and prepping for interviews. Yes, Reid is ambivalent. His intimate study will enthrall, and possibly unnerve, those planning to attend Harvard Business, or any other business school.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0688128173
• ISBN 13: 9780688128173
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 331