Penelope Trunk Saw An Article About Someone Who Started A Successful Hedge Fund Without Having Gone To B-School And Voila: This Week's Column
Brazen Careerist and smartest woman in the world Penelope Trunk has a new piece of advice for you: screw business school. Now, we know you’re thinking, “Because Ms. Trunk is the same woman who once instructed the ladies to “dress like hookers, solicit co-workers, expect harassment, and stay cool” and people in general to switch rapidly from job to job, make it clear to prospective employers that they require a lot of time off, and live with mom and dad, doesn’t her latest pearl of wisdom mean I should run to B-school immediately?” Our snap judgment is “yes,” but let’s put that off for a sec and see where Penelope, Girl Genius is coming from. Her reasons for not going to business school are as follows:
1. Only the top business schools have high value.
This is true. And since you’re reading a Penelope Trunk original, girl’s got a pretty good idea of your level of intelligence. Wharton-material it is not. Probably not even Drexel University LeBow’s School of Business, either.
2. Business schools are compromised by a lack of female applicants.
Wait a second—is Penelope Trunk, the woman who is singlehandedly tearing down the strides made by the feminist movement with tips like “don’t report sexual harassment” and “let’s blow off that assignment to gets manis and pedis and talk about The Hills and what a jerkface that Spencer is girls, omg it’ll be totes awesome just like it is being a functioning human being without a brain!” about to suggest that you should take a stand against MBA programs because they don’t have enough women? Nah, she’s just making the circuitous argument that because some women want to be able to have children before they go barren and are therefore not working for as many years before going to business school as in the past (when it was “baby or b-school, you can only pick one”), and places like HBS are making concessions to those with such pipe dreams, the quality of education is being diluted. That’s right Harvard et. al.—shape up. Until then, no more Penelope Trunk endorsement for you.
3. Business school is like buying a high-priced recruiter.
That sounds like a lot less work, so why don’t you just do that?
4. Hotshots don't go to business school anymore.
Tim Sykes didn’t go to b-school. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t even graduate from college. Mine is not a tenuous argument!
5. People go to business school for the wrong reasons.
Penelope says that “If you're not a star performer before b-school, you probably won't be one after you graduate. And if you just want to make a lot of money, the odds of you of doing that are only as good as the odds of you getting into a top school -- currently about 1 in 10,” which circles us back to reason No. 1 not to go to b-school, which is that you can’t get in. Makes sense, if dumb yourself down enough to think about it like that. (NB: Penelope would like you to know that going to business school to find a husband is never wrong, totes obvi.)
Recommendation: go to business school today. Now. Right this second.
Earlier T-A (Trunk Advice): Junk in the Trunk of the Week – College Advice
More Junk in the Trunk
B-school Confidential: MBAs May Be Obsolete [Yahoo! Finance]
Bye-Bye B-School [NYT]
Comments
Question to the crowd: Who is the bigger flake & why? Sykes or Trunk? (and why do both have such easily-made fun of last names, wtf?
Posted by: Anal_yst | October 5, 2007 05:15 PM
I hate to say it, but I tend to agree with her. B-school is of little actual value - you learn the same or more useful things in much less time by working in banking or for a consulting firm. A good B-school is just like an Ivy liberal arts degree: of little actual use, but the connections and gatekeeping can help you out.
Going to a lower tier b-school is like going to a lower tier law school - a complete waste of money for the vast majority of those who attend (like north of 80%). If you go to the top 5, then you probably would have been fine anyways, except for working at Goldman.
If you want to actually learn something interesting and valuable, a technical degree that is heavy on the quant side is a far superior idea.
Applied statistics, pure math, or engineering (especially electrical, chemical, biomedical, or interdisciplinary) are going to be much more useful and will get you into all the same firms, at a much higher level and in a dramatically more secure position than a run of the mill HBS grad.
Posted by: Bulging Bracket | October 5, 2007 05:24 PM
lets consider this gem:
And if you are thinking of becoming a CEO, Sallie Krawcheck, herself the CEO of Citigroup's Global Wealth Management, says you should be an investment banking analyst first. That's because being a CEO is really about making decisions with limited information, and that's what analysts do best.
Posted by: zim | October 5, 2007 05:27 PM
I liked this point:
"And if you are thinking of becoming a CEO, Sallie Krawcheck, herself the CEO of Citigroup's Global Wealth Management, says you should be an investment banking analyst first. That's because being a CEO is really about making decisions with limited information, and that's what analysts do best."
That's helpful. Telling the people that are now looking at b-school that they should have gone into banking years ago when they graduated from undergrad...
Posted by: AJ | October 5, 2007 05:28 PM
You're the best, Bess.
Posted by: Anonymous | October 5, 2007 05:28 PM
Dammit, zim beat me to it by 1 minute
Posted by: AJ | October 5, 2007 05:29 PM
hmm...27% of all PE and VC partners went to HBS. That figure gets bigger if you take the top 5 or top 10 b-schools. A large percentage of Fortune 500 CEOs have MBAs.
Posted by: About to overpay for a b-school degree | October 5, 2007 05:35 PM
What, no comments about the fact that people go to B-school in the first place because they are not smart enough to be doctors? Second sentence..
This chick's thought process reminds me of me when i was 4 years old: i wanted to be a doctor and a truck driver because doctors make alot of money and i thought sleeping in cab of a truck sounded cool.
Then I turned 5. Apparently her brain don't work that fast.
Posted by: The_Overdog | October 5, 2007 05:53 PM
... and then I realized bankers made more...
Posted by: AJ | October 5, 2007 06:02 PM
Go to business school, especially HBS. Who knows, maybe someday you will be POTUS.
Posted by: Karl Rove | October 5, 2007 06:03 PM
Alright so FFIP for 4.75 is now 60% based on the binary option. I was completely wrong.
Posted by: Anonymous | October 5, 2007 06:13 PM
"hmm...27% of all PE and VC partners went to HBS. That figure gets bigger if you take the top 5 or top 10 b-schools. A large percentage of Fortune 500 CEOs have MBAs."
72% of statistics are made up on the spot. 35% of people know that...
Posted by: Anonymous | October 5, 2007 06:21 PM
60% of the time it works every time
Posted by: Brian Fantana | October 5, 2007 06:25 PM
I am very confused. You mean HBS is the only B-school that matters? The punk we hired from Fuqua told us that HBS was bullshit and only taught people how to take credit for other people's work.
He had to be right!! He had one job (at an asset management firm that went under) before B-school for like three or four years straight!! He also explained why our Excel spreadsheets were not complex enough so by definition he had to know what he was talking, right?
Okay, so he can't talk to actual clients without being really insulting but that is just because talking to idiotic clients is beneath him!! He went to Fuqua for God's sake!!
God I am such an ass clown!! Why didn't we just pretend to run a private equity firm so that a HBS grad would be willing to work for us long enough that people would give us money to spend on overleveraged businesses that had no chance of meeting plan so that we could collect 2/20 (specifically the "2") and get rich with actually adding value and then when the businesses went into bankruptcy we would raise a fund to buy them too (another 2/20, woohoo!).
Who gives a shit. If you weren't smart enough to get a job at the ultimate ponzi scheme (GS) then you should go to ........ well it doesn't really matter does it.
Posted by: Mike Cervantes | October 5, 2007 06:40 PM
I went to HBS. I wear white socks now. It can get cold in Minnesota, too.
Posted by: Fake Jeff Skilling | October 5, 2007 10:40 PM
I don't give any credibility to her articles, but she is kind of cute...you have to admit it, or am I the only one?
Posted by: Anonymous | October 6, 2007 12:04 AM
Aw gee, Bessie. Why ya gotsta go hatin' on Drexel?
Posted by: Dragon93 | October 6, 2007 09:14 AM
Anon,
RE: Her cuteness:
She was a college volleyball player. Nothing more needs to be said.
Posted by: The_Overdog | October 7, 2007 11:44 PM
The middle class is shrink'in and guess who is at the upper end? People with advanced degrees! Pick one you like, but don't stay as assistant manager of pizza hut because you didn't get into Harvard!
Posted by: NoFate | October 8, 2007 04:56 AM
I thought covering Penelope was Keith's job.
Posted by: Oh where on where has my little Keith gone? | October 8, 2007 07:20 AM
For the record - it's never mattered in Europe. The only reason you chaps feel the need for an MBA is because your BA / BSc programmes are so incredibly weak.
Posted by: Charles Surface | October 8, 2007 08:55 AM
@ Overdog, the best thing about college volleyball players is that they own their own kneepads.
Posted by: Zbignew | October 8, 2007 09:26 AM
US BA/BSc programs weak relative to Europe? Dont think so.
Posted by: Anonymous | October 8, 2007 10:34 AM
She has also said to skip law school because it's a crutch. Hmmm . . . Skip B school. Skip law school. Mention former pro volleyball career every chance I get.
I think she has issues with her own achievements, because apparently she peaked 20 years ago.
Posted by: Anonymous | October 9, 2007 08:22 AM
Anonymous 10:34 - they teach you to use apostrophes, at least...
Posted by: Anonymous | October 9, 2007 08:34 AM