blog of kaiyen

First – a SCUMBAG is a Santa Clara University MBA Graduate.  It’s also an acronym that I really don’t like, but it’s catchy for a blog post title.  Works at the twitter-size level.

When I first entered the SCU evening MBA program, I was provided two options for how to get through the program in either 2 or 3 years.  The former included taking 3 classes per quarter in the Fall, Winter, and Spring, and then 2 in the summers.  It was pretty intense, and I realized that I was likely to come much closer to 3 than 2.

Well, it turns out I could have finished in 2, despite a far less taxing schedule.  Before you go onto “more,” I will say that I have slowed down my course progress a bit to time my enrollment in the ultimate “Capstone” course with a large group of others that increase my chances of being on a good team.  And so that I can use Santa Clara’s employee tuition program to take a few classes out of pure interest, rather than only those required and needed to graduate.  So I am looking at 2.75 years.  But somehow I could have finished in 2…I started in Spring of 2007.  Here’s my course load, along with number of units and a few comments

Spring 2007 (6 total units)

• Accounting 301 (3 units)
  Financial and Managerial Accounting crammed into one course, which is now split into 300 and 302
• Management 501 (3)

Summer 2007 (6 total units, 12 so far)

• OMIS 353
  ACCT 301, MGMT 501, and OMIS 353 are the core that one really needs to start with that opens up options down the road.  Many friends did OMIS 353 in the Spring, and then suffered a really rough 7 week version of ACCT 301 in the summer.  I’m glad I went this route.
• Management 505
  

Fall 2007 (6 total units, 18 so far)

• MGMT 503 (3)
  If you want to head down the management track of courses, you need this one.  Get it out of the way early.
• FNCE 451 (3)

Winter 2008 (11 total units, 29 so far)

• FNCE 455 (3)
• MGMT 512 (3)
  This one and 538 were the first pure electives I took.
• MGMT 538 (3)
• MGMT 701 (1)
  I took this “Seminar in Leadership” out of interest, though it ended up being more of unit filler than I had expected.  But this and other extra random units made a difference in the end
• IDIS 705 (1)
  This is a required 1 unit course that one almost never gets into until much later in the program.  I snuck in when someone dropped it at the last minute.  Again, I got an extra unit here.

Spring 2008 (9 units total, 38 so far)

• ECON 401 (3)
  Let’s be honest, no one wants to take 401 with Heineke due to the workload.  But getting into the summer course with McAllister is next to impossible due to demand.  I got lucky that Shin taught this one this time.
• MGMT 524 (3)
• OMIS 355 (3)

Summer 2009 (6 units total, 44 so far)

• MGMt 516 (3)
• MKTG 551 (3)

This is where things deviate just a bit from what I took to what I could have taken.  If I had taken the two following courses in Fall 2009 I would have finished in 2 years.  Winter 2009 is as I did take it.

Fall 2009 (7 units total, 51 so far)

• OMIS 357 (3)
• Accounting Elective
• IDIS 703 (1, and I actually did take this one)

So only a slight deviation in the fall.

Winter 2009 (6 units total, 57 so far – note that I need 54 in order to take Capstone))

• ECON 405 (3)
• MKTG 553 (3)

Spring 2009

• MGMT 619 – CAPSTONE

So, there you go.  I could have gotten all of my required courses out of the way, including the electives, gotten all of the units done, and gotten my MBA in 2 years.  And I only took three 3-unit courses in a quarter twice, and when I took the extra 1 unit courses the workload was very manageable.

**If I messed up anywhere in my analysis let me know.