I think the true test to any decision that you make in life is the answer to the question, “What if I could do it all over again?” When I ask myself that question in regards to the process I used in deciding on whether to pursue my MBA, there’s probably a lot of things I would change. However, when thinking about whether or not I would choose to come to Ivey the answer is, without hesitation, a resounding YES!
I am probably not the typical MBA candidate. I have a BSc. with honors in Chemistry, and a MSc. with a focus in Organic Chemistry and worked as a research chemist at a large Biotech company. I decided I wanted to do my MBA while I was at Western working towards my MSc. The guy that lived in the apartment next to me was an Ivey MBA and we often would chat in the elevator about the program. It sounded pretty great to me at the time and I thought it was something that I would eventually want to pursue. The decisions on when would be the right time and what would be the right school; I must admit were not strong fact-based decisions. I made both of these decisions around my personal life and can honestly say it could have easily turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life considering the criteria I used in the process.
I decided to think about applying for the MBA program in the last week of May, 2007.
Ivey was my first choice for almost no other reason than that I wanted to be in London Ontario. I knew this was a pretty safe choice as well because Ivey was one of the top business schools in Canada, but outside of that little piece of information I had done no research about MBA schools previously. I went to the Ivey website and I was shocked to see that Ivey had recently changed to a 12 month program and that I could still apply for admittance to the September cohort (the application deadline was sometime in July at the time). I made an on the spot decision to go for it. A month later I wrote the GMAT (something a month earlier I hardly knew existed), filled out an application to Ivey and waited to hear that I had been accepted. Please don’t do this if you are picking an MBA school. This was just stupid on my part! Strangely enough, I am convinced that this was one of those life changing moments where fate was in complete control.
I started the program in September, 2007.
Towards the end of October, my father’s health began to decline rapidly and on December 1st I received the unpleasant phone call from my father’s doctor who said, “Justin, your father is in the hospital. Things don’t look good. At this stage there is no way that your father will be able to return home and if he is to leave the hospital, he will have to go into a nursing home.” Obviously, I was devastated by this news. Adding to the crisis was the fact that earlier that summer my father had made me his power of attorney. There was a lot of disagreement amongst the family at that time, as to what would be the best thing to do for my dad and in addition I was receiving a lot of pressure from the nursing staff about agreeing to a ‘do not resuscitate order’ if things took a turn for the worse. Slightly compounding the problem was that earlier that day before receiving the phone call, my girlfriend of two and a half years had broken up with me.
Things were certainly a disaster and looking back I am surprised that I was able to cope with it.
I largely credit my first three months at Ivey as preparing me to face this situation. One of the main taglines for Ivey is “Cross Enterprise Leadership.” I have heard some perspective students question what separates Ivey from other schools in this regard and suggest that this is just a branding ploy. I can’t comment on other schools’ ability to instill leadership qualities in their students, but I can say that this is a true “value add” at Ivey. Sometimes you aren’t even aware these skills are being built in you as you go through the program, but when disaster strikes, in your personal life or professional life the foundation that has been laid at the school instantly kicks in. You spend a lot of time in the first module discussing leadership and there is a class dedicated to leading people and organizations (LPO).
You have a chance for self-reflection in the managing your career course (MYC) and it really helps you determine what is important to you. The communicating effectively course (CE) instilled in me the idea that “if people don’t remember what you have said, then you haven’t spoken.” In addition to fundamental business take-a-ways in some of the more technical courses such as analytics, accounting and finance, I really connected with the idea of sunk costs in decision making processes.
Even though I had potentially made poor decisions in the past, it was a sunk cost and I couldn’t allow that to impact future decisions. Strategy was probably my favorite course that I have taken at Ivey. I felt like it really helped me break a problem into manageable pieces and then develop an approach to solving that problem. In my humble opinion students can learn business fundamentals and skills at any business school, but what separates Ivey from other schools is that the lessons that you learn inside the classroom in regards to business are directly transferable outside of the classroom. The caliber of the professors is certainly another consideration. Incidentally, the professors at Ivey are the highest quality that I have experienced in any educational program I have been enrolled.
To complete the rest of the story, I chose to leave the program in December. The school was very accommodating. They applied no pressure to make any decisions and were willing to support me in any way that they could.
I was touched to receive regular emails from one of the professors while I was at home. With the support of my family we were able to bring my father home so that he didn’t have to spend his days in the hospital or a nursing home. Sadly, he passed away in May of this year but not before he was able to impart many impactful and inspiring life lessons into me. The program sent me a very nice card and a photo album and encouraged me to capture some of my memories of my father. I rejoined the program in September, 2008 and was able to pick up exactly where I had left off with the cohort that began in May 2008. I must admit that rejoining the program was a bit frustrating and more difficult than I would have liked, but the program was undergoing some major changes at the time and given the overall experience that I have had at Ivey, I am certainly willing to provide them the benefit of the doubt.
The class that I joined is another exceptional group of people. I was impressed by how quickly they made me feel a part of the class. This was something I was very worried about when coming back to the program. Now, as I am finishing up my second third of the program I am starting to become really excited about finishing and getting back into the work force. I am truly appreciative about the people and experiences that I have had at Ivey. It has been a life changing experience where I have learned not only countless business lessons but how to become a better person. So as I consider the question, if I could do it all over again, I am sure you can understand why the answer is a resounding YES!