Tag: mmm

Secret Pro Tips for International MBA Students who Want to Work in the United States

As a former Northwestern Kellogg MMM (MBA + Masters in Design Innovation), I’ll tell you something that you want to know but that no one at Kellogg will ever tell you:

Secret Pro Tip:

If you’re an international student who REALLY wants to work (and  / stay) in the United States (USA) after graduation, invest in the MMM program.

Here’s why:

  • As an international MBA student in the US, you will be on a F-1 Student Visa for full-time students (if you are an exchange student, you will be on J-1). You are allowed to work up to 1 year in the USA on OPT period (Optional Practical Training), given that you find a job no later than 3 months after graduation.
  • In the unfortunate situation you have not found a job three months after graduation, you must leave the United States.
  • If you find a job with a company that is willing to sponsor your H1B Visa, you enter a one-time lottery for the H1B Visa. The probability of winning this year (2016) was just 40% for those holding a Master’s degree from the US. The odds were lower if you only held a Bachelor’s degree. Generally, this percentage becomes lower with each passing year due to increases in demand (from people like you who are reading this).
  • If you lose the lottery (odds are you will), you go back home.
  • Now, with MMM, the M.S. in Design Innovation is an engineering degree (that does NOT require an engineering background) from the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern. This engineering degree allows you to stay in the US an extra two years (3 total) and participate in the lottery a total of 3 times.

It can be said that the MS DI program is not really an engineering program, in the way that most people think about engineering (hardcore math & science). Nonetheless, it’s classified as an engineering program.

Beyond that are the more traditional reasons to be part of Kellogg: long-time elite business school brand, the amazing new all-glass lakefront building, rise in the rankings, leading percentages for diversity in gender and internationality, continued emphasis on tech, and my articles on the experience). Plus the MS in Design Innovation offers a great core of classes that will help you understand problems from bottom up (“what is the user/customer thinking?), rather than just top-down (“well, it’s clear from the financials, we have too many employees, let’s just fire them”).

All that sounds sound great, but let’s be real. The reason you go to business school is to fulfill your professional goals. If your goal is to be in the United States long term, apply for Kellogg MMM.

The simple math: at today’s acceptance rates, you have a 60% chance of getting rejected and having to leave the country after one year. With MMM, you can stay at least three years and the chances you will end up having to leave the US without a Visa is only 21.6%.

Is this worth an extra quarter of tuition? Of course it is.

How we won the Kellogg Marketing Conference’s Creative Lab (and a really big shoe)

(This was written by my friend and teammate Justin but reposting it here after it was originally posted at the Kellogg Blog)

How we won the Kellogg Marketing Conference’s Creative Lab (and a really big shoe)

Kellogg’s Marketing Conference is by far one of the largest events at Kellogg. More than 500 attendees, hotshot panelists from companies like Google, SC Johnson, Kraft, Johnson & Johnson, Pepsico and Uber, incredible keynote speakers and the vibrancy of the student leadership team make this an exciting and informative event.

For the first time, this year’s marketing conference featured a creative session competition hosted by the Google Brand Studio. Six teams of four members competed to solve a marketing prompt delivered the day of the competition.We were excited to participate because of our interest in the rapidly evolving tech industry.  Prior to Kellogg, each of us had spent some time in the tech industry:

  • Shriansh worked with mobile and financial software
  • Josh ran several startups in the internet technology space
  • Michael served as COO for Vietnam’s first social networking website
  • Justin worked in venture capital and product development for startups in mobile and clean-tech.

 The ‘crazy, fun and different’ nature of the Creative Lab began with how the challenge prompt itself was chosen. The 500-odd audience members had to vote (with the results being live-streamed right in front of us) on their choice between two challenges. The winning prompt was basically given to us on the spot for us to work on. 

The session itself was 35 minutes of brutal creativity. Spurred on by three of Google’s best, we brainstormed and came up with a solution. Using some of the tools and methodologies used at Google, we worked in our team to flesh out ideas, challenge thought processes and uncover insights to form a strategic solution to the prompt.

The four of us definitely felt the pressure as the clock was winding down to present in front of the other five teams and the three leaders from Google’s Brand Studio. In the last few minutes we wrote down our strategy and how we’d execute it, while also figuring out who’d tell the story.

Through the lab, we learned that creativity can be rapid, structured and apparently time-boxed. We experienced first-hand how rapid brainstorming floods the mind with ideas. Frankly, we feel that being left with more time to ponder the challenge might have derailed the intuition and raw expression that came forward in our strategy. Given how much fun we had, we’ll definitely carry these methods into our classrooms and future organizations.

After each of the six teams presented, the Google representatives selected three teams to move forward and present to the conference attendees. Afterward, the audience and judges voted using a phone app. After tallying the votes, the speaker announced, “And the winner of the Google Creative Lab competition is … Team 1! Michael, Shriansh, Josh, and Justin!”  We were extremely excited!

We won a trip to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., where we will present a more detailed version of the idea to a few Google Executives.

Oh. And we won the Kellogg Marketing Conference shoe!

Justin Saeheng ‘16 is currently a student in the MMM program. Prior to Kellogg, he spent two years at a venture capital firm in the silicon valley focused on clean-tech, semiconductor, telecoms and sensors.  He worked closely with startups through product innovation, development and commercialization as well as strategic market entries into Asia and Europe. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

Shriansh Shrivastava ’16 (@Shriansh) is currently a student in the MMM program. He grew up in India, spent 10 years in the UK (undergrad + an awesome job working with unreleased cellphones +  then worked on a mental health suicide prevention project – using smartphones, of course) and finally spent a year in Canada working for an ATM software company. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

Joshua Borin ’15 is currently a student in Kellogg’s One-Year MBA program. Before Kellogg, Joshua ran a small business, survived the rise and fall of an e-commerce company and made an industry-noticing impact on stopping trade of counterfeit goods online. He loves helping small companies overcome the challenges that arise during rapid growth and scaling. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

Michael Nguyen ’16 is currently a student in the MMM program. In the past he served as Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Cyworld Vietnam, the country’s first social network; co-founded Mimo, a popular Twitter-like service in Vietnam; and helped RedOctane launch the Guitar Hero video game franchise. Connect with him on LinkedIn.