Buddhist Marketer

Budding Entrepreneurs Go Back To School

Three clarifications of an article in which I was recently quoted

As some of you may know, currently I am the director of marketing for GradSchools.com, the best directory of graduate programs on the planet.  As part of these duties, I was recently interviewed by Amy Byrnes of Business News Daily for an article, “Budding Entrepreneurs Go Back to School.”  Of course, journalism’s a tough gig, and the rapidity of my speech on occasion approaches hog auctioneer status.  So it’s no surprise that there are a few clarifications I’d like to offer up:

“We see two sets of people with a renewed interest in grad school: The unemployed and the underemployed,” said Anittah Patrick of Gradschools.com. In the past two years the site has seen a general uptick in traffic from those interested in going back to school, Patrick said.

Education, urban planning and pharmacology are among the most researched programs on the web site.

1.  The “unemployed and the underemployed” actually comprised, together, of one subset of graduate degree seeker that I discussed.  And it’s this subset that’s grown as a share of our audience composition, joining our perennial ranks of college upperclassmen, “business as usual” career changers, and traditional “it’s time to go to graduate school” prospective students who are researching graduate programs (and would have independent the economy).

2.  Perennial field of study favorites include Education & Teaching master’s and doctoral programs along with Business & MBA.  However, graduate programs for which there is a delta between “student interest” and “graduate program availability” include:

• Physician assistant graduate programs
• Social work MSW programs
• Speech pathology graduate programs
• PharmD programs
• Urban planning graduate programs

These are the subject areas for which enterprising graduate school deans may want to consider developing graduate programs if none yet exist at their university: the market wants these programs, but there aren’t enough programs out there to satisfy prospective graduate student interest.  As it relates specifically to urban planning:

The downside, however, is a dearth of programs to meet the demands of those interested in this specialty.

“Academia has been slow to respond to the market,” Patrick said. As an alternative, prospective students should also consider landscape architecture as well as urban affairs and planning graduate programs that are similar in nature and also earmarked for expansion in the next five years.

For what it’s worth, I also suggested forestry and environmental studies programs.  What can I say; I’m a Yalie!

One final clarification:

Increasingly, business schools are offering more specialized degrees to increase admissions. Technology and leadership MBA’s are drawing the most interest, according to Patrick.

3.  Actually, the specialized MBA programs that are recruiting the hardest are the Technology MBAs and the Leadership MBAs.  So if you’re thinking about an MBA and are being strategic about your chances for getting in, you may want to investigate these programs.

However, the MBA programs for which there is the most prospective b-school student interest include:

1. Online or hybrid MBA programs
2. Sports management MBAs
3. JD - MBA dual degree programs
4. Health care MBAs
5. Non-profit administration MBAs

If you’re the dean of a business school and you don’t have a program that specializes in these kinds of interests (or don’t actively market them) you may want to consider your strategies for taking advantage of increased demand in these areas.

And, that’s a wrap!  Thanks to Ms. Byrnes for on the whole capturing all the pertinent info correctly.

You can read “Budding Entrepreneurs Go Back to School” in its entirety by clicking here.

Quoted in The New York Observer

From Max Abelson’s “Boola Boola Boola…and Moola! Aging Yalies Raise Hell on Upper West Side” in The New York Observer:

Lithe 31-year-old Anittah Patrick, 1999 class secretary, in a Yale-blue dress and four-inch heels, was outside the townhouse. “You’re not a full meal, you’re a snack,” she told the Transom—Class of 2006.

“There was at least one woman in my age group looking for older single men,” she said, gesturing toward the townhouse, where techno party lights built into the entryway ceiling were blasting blue. Ms. Patrick is throwing a Feb Club party in Aruba on Valentine’s Day.

Click here to check out pictures from Feb Club for Old People, 2008 edition.

DinnerGrrls.org mentioned briefly in The Wall Street Journal

A thank you is due to Laura Allen of 15SecondPitch.com for mentioning DinnerGrrls.org during her interview with The Wall Street Journal.

DinnerGrrls.org article in the Yale Daily News

Women’s mentoring group thrives

Two years after graduation, Anittah Patrick ‘99 missed the women in her life.

“My entire life, I’ve played competitive sports, so I’ve always had a team of girls,” Patrick said. “At Yale I was on the crew team for a year and was very close to those girls down the road.”

After college, Patrick said, that network of women disappeared. So last summer, Patrick decided to create a new kind of team for herself, not in the sweaty confines of a gym, but in the exuberant neon haze of New York night life.

She called the group “DinnerGrrls.”

The group, which began as a social bond among young professional women, has metamorphosed into a multilayered mentoring organization for undergraduate and newly graduated women alike.

“DinnerGrrls met my subconscious need for sisters, women who were interested in the same things, were ambitious, and were thinking about their careers and how they could improve it,” Patrick said.

This month, Patrick expanded the support system to include Yale undergraduates through a mentoring program she calls “Two Years Out.” The new program connects female undergraduates with recently graduated women.

Patrick said when she was at Yale, she rarely asked for help from anyone.

“I rarely went to any of my advisors,” Patrick said. “I know that when I was a Yale student, it was hard for me to accept the notion that I could be mentored.”

Patrick said the DinnerGrrls mentoring program for undergraduates is not so much about asking for help as being able to bounce ideas off another person who has been through it all before.

Christine Chung ‘03 was one of half-a-dozen Yale students to accept the DinnerGrrls offer to connect her with a mentor. “I’m realizing that I only have 3 semesters left, and guidance from people who have already gone through it would be helpful,” Chung said.

Patrick added the first quasi-mentoring layer to DinnerGrrls in August, when she began to feel that something was missing in a group limited to women of one age and experience.

“My mom was a stay-at-home mom and had no idea about careers or anything,” Patrick said. “There’s only so many things I can turn to my dad about. He’s never dealt with the question, ‘If I don’t get into business school this year, when am I going to have babies and make a million bucks?’”

So Patrick began inviting DinnerGuests — women who had “been out [of college] five to 10 years or who had advanced degrees who could offer insight about their career development in general” — to serve as a mentors for an evening.

“They’ve been really honest about how if you want to be a partner at a firm, you can’t have kids. Having it all is really a mess,” Patrick said. “Having them say this is, on the one hand, unsettling, but on the other hand reassuring because if you don’t have it, you’re not a failure.”

Michelle Peluso, the chief executive officer of an online travel company called State 59.com, spoke as a DinnerGuest in the fall. She said the intimate setting allowed the group to dig into the challenges they faced as women balancing work with life.

“They’re asking not just how do I get to the top of my career, but how do I as a woman also still contribute to the community, still have strong family and friend relationships,” Peluso said. “While it’s not only a female challenge, it’s certainly something females have been thinking about for a long time.”

Stella Daily, a 2000 Princeton graduate, is one of 50 DinnerGrrls and Chung’s new mentor.

Daily said one of the best pieces of advice she’s gotten from the DinnerGuests who have served as mentors to her is that “being ballsy pays off.”

“I think women tend to accept defeat more easily than guys do,” Daily said.

Daily said she was inspired by one of the DinnerGuests who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“She was talking about was how she broke into her field,” Daily said. “She basically went to McKinsey and demanded an interview. She’s a consultant at McKinsey, so obviously it worked.”

Patrick said she hopes DinnerGrrls can continue to provide this kind of steely inspiration for all the women involved.

“[My mom] abandoned her idea of becoming a doctor when she was 12,” Patrick said. “Who knows what could have been if my mom had had a group that she could turn to.”