BYU MBA Program 2008

It is getting harder and harder to focus on school these days. Senioritis is definitely setting in. Pretty much all the second years here at BYU are more than ready to finish things up and get out of here and start making money again, except of a few of us that are going on to get PHDs. Good luck with that.

Lately we have had a lot of opportunities to compete in competitions around here at BYU. Just recently we had an opportunity to compete in an Omniture competition. (Omniture is a company out here in Utah that gives websites all these metrics on customer to help them improve their site) It was pretty cool, we had the opportunity to go over a site and tell them what they need to do to improve and make more money using the metrics from Omniture. I thought we did pretty well, but my group forgot to turn in our presentation after we presented so we got booted out of the competition. Oh well.

Also in our MBA Brand Management class a local company Hogi Yogi gave us a chance to come up with a complete brand strategy for a new product they are coming out with. It was a great opportunity to do some real life brand strategy for a company that needed it. We did not win, but I did learn something. Our group really focused on a strategy for getting the brand out there in the hands of the people and creating buzz, but the team that won did a lot of marketing research and created the brand’s demographics. If you are working with a company, make sure you know exactly what they want. Hogi Yogi wanted to understand their target demographic, and we gave them something else. Make sure you know exactly what the goal is before you go off and create a project.

A lot of other groups as well here in the program have been traveling to different universities to compete in competitions in Ethics, Marketing, Supply Chain and product development. It is good to see my friends go out and win some of these competitions, and they have all really enjoyed the opportunity to go out and compete with other schools. The only downside is that Wake Forrest misspelled out name, callings us “Bringham Young University”. Close, but it is Brigham, not “Bring-ham”. Then again who doesn’t like ham, especially around the holidays, or from the “Honey-baked ham” company.

These last two weeks have been murderous though. I have been putting in 13hr days straight for 2 weeks excluding Sunday to finish up my projects for my two block classes. I guess I could have been working on them the whole block, but then again I wanted to wait until the end of the class when I had received all the material from the class so I could do a really good project, or that is just an excuse for procrastination. I finally finished off the products, and I enjoyed the classes. If you are coming to the BYU MBA program, I recommended them both: Strategic Decision Making from Dr. Godfrey and Advanced Competitive Strategy from Dr. Bryce.

Times winding down, and in a week I get to go to Argentina. That is why we have field studies, so a company will pay for you to make a trip to a foreign country. You have to love the Global Management Department here at BYU. Getting to go to Argentina for free will definitely be the highlight of the semester. Sure, we have to do some work while there for the company, but it is going to be a blast.

It is crazy to look around and realize I will be leaving this place in 2 months. Sometimes it feels like I did not attend BYU at all because I spend all my time in the Tanner Building, which by the way is looking good now that the construction is almost done. I have appreciated my time, and would recommend this program to anyone. I guess I had better enjoy the cold weather while I can before I head off to Arizona.