Irene Adler, General Manager Global Marketing at Mori Seiki, about her MBA with The Open University Business School: I come from Austria and neither studied economics nor technology and I am not in banking or controlling either. So I guess I am not classic MBA material.

With a new admissions cycle comes plenty of opportunities to meet someone from the MBA team.  We always encourage applicants to come and visit us in St.Gallen in person, partly because the best way to to judge a school is through your own experience, but also because we know that Switzerland, St.Gallen and the MBA experience will sell itself to you!

“Coursera” is the third person singular, future tense, of the French verb, “to run, race, or chase.”[1] Coursera is also a leading aggregator of online courses of study. Yesterday, University of Virginia and Coursera announced a partnership to place UVA courses online. Darden has agreed to provide one of these courses, starting in January. A race of sorts is in progress, which brings the French verb to mind. The announcement and the volume of subsequent email invite more discussion. What are our aims? What do we have to bring to this? What are Coursera and the partnership all about? Will this be sustainable? Let me explain our[2] view.

An elderly neighbor here in Virginia used to refer to the Civil War as “the late unpleasantness,” a term so ironic in its understatement of a complicated and bitter convulsion. These days, irony helps; maybe my neighbor will apply the term to the recent controversy at the University of Virginia around the ouster and reinstatement of President Teresa Sullivan.

Over six days last week all of our 32 full-time St. Gallen MBAs were put through a tough 70 minute oral exam, in front of a jury including a professor from a peer MBA programme, two private sector employers, and myself. What follows are my initial reactions to this innovation in the St. Gallen MBA programme–the views of others involved are being canvassed. But first some more background.

You might have been wondering where we have been hiding. Well, since the Electives phase started in late February, we are pretty much all over the place. The beauty of Electives is that you get to make your own schedule.

Welcome back to another edition of Stacy Blackman’s B-School Buzz, where we share the latest and greatest from the MBA blogosphere. This week, our Buzz bloggers share their waitlist woes, offer feedback on the admissions process from the other side of the hump, and point out the benefits that come with accompanying your spouse on the journey through b-school.

The second half our MBA is in full speed. After returning from Christmas break in January, it has been a whirlwind. I had the idea that after the 4th, and final core block, was finished we would be have a little “breather” in the curriculum. Wrong! We went straight into our Learning Assessment Week (more or less affectionately known by its acronym LAW), which was a 90 minute oral exam testing our knowledge of the MBA material thus far, presentation skills and current events in the business world. There was not a day that went by prior to LAW that every student in the class was deeply engrossed in world developments chronicled in the Financial Times. The students organized small discussion groups on what was in the FT that day, and during coffee breaks everyone was glued to the newspaper. The assessment itself was a fantastic experience (though I know I definitely was biting my nails just a few minutes before, trying to figure out what was waiting for me on the other side of the door where Simon Evenett, one esteemed professor, and two corporate panelists were waiting for me- but I am happy to report that it really was not as bad as it sounds), and I think this should be a mandatory assessment for all MBAs graduating from programs around the world.

As a HSG-MBA student, you…
Have a million things to do (no further elaboration needed).

One wonders why we do this to ourselves:
At some point of our lives – typically around the mid-thirties, some earlier, some later – we start to make ourselves busy.  While, as teens, we literally had to be dragged to any type of activity that barely resembled work, and the weekends seemed eternally far away at any day of the week (especially on Thursdays…) when we were in our 20s, now that the magic number 40 is in close sight just ahead, we embrace any activity that presents itself, voluntarily taking up more responsibilities in our jobs, tirelessly raising our children, re-activating one or two old hobbies that we had neglected for much too long and seriously think about adding another degree to our collection of qualifications.