AvariciousBanker

No. I'm already in grad school, and I'm a big fan of our school's MPP program. Do you plan to attend SAIS?

1.) You really don't know that. Most likely, it won't. Inaction is easier than action for these guys, especially when Revolution can likely attract MORE attention after a rescission. 2.) We have this thing called the first amendment. People are free to say stupid things and other people are free to maybe just walk away. We also have freedom of association. However, for JHU to disassociate from Revolution would bring even MORE negative attention on the institution which ultimately accomplishes Revolution's aim. 3.) If you enjoy coming off as ugly, I don't have a problem with that. Just weird you're going into politics. Would anyone like to lay claim any of these various phantom PMs (on this topic and several others) you keep talking about? They didn't come from the same... authors... who sent Donald Trump thousands of letters asking him if he is going to run for President, did they? Look, it's nice that you're taking the bullet for getting Revolution to stop obsessing, but if you're actually interested in politics, going through with this could come back to haunt you. Just make sure you've got a good explanation for all of this some day. If you're going into a career in finance or business, perhaps even law, that's a different story- nobody will care.

Why would you post that you are going to call up SAIS and try to trigger their morals clause? Why wouldn't you just call them and disappear if that's what you wanted to do? 1.) This won't trigger the morals clause. 2.) This could signal that you like to flaunt and abuse power. That's a big problem for someone going into public policy. 3.) This makes you look ugly. Trust me. Find another thread to attack Revolution in, and find a different approach (like maybe just calling him crazy or stupid or wrong.) I completely agree with everyone who thinks Revolution needs to shut up. I think this particular approach for getting him to shut up is foolish. You got into Harvard; you're too smart for this.

I ended on a self-deprecating banker joke to help you save face. You instead turned around and claimed that I found blackmail acceptable, which I don't. What you are doing is essentially blackmail, BTW. I'm glad you've received some support on this, but that doesn't change the fact that this looks ugly to most people.

Fortunately for Revolution, a misguided prestige obsession and interest in working in industry doesn't really trigger the morals clause and you know it. I strongly disagree with just about everything that Revolution has said, but this is only going to backfire on you. Oh, and it looks ugly. Word of advice from a malevolent Wall Street type: If you're going to blackmail people, do it in private! MWAHAHAHAHA!!!!! (Oops! This advice has triggered the morals clause for A.Banker.)

Revolution, $63K is a lot of money. It can pay for a lot of hang gliding, which is going to get you more girls than HBS will. Actually, just being confident changes the hierarchy completely. Whether your degree is from Harvard or from UMass. There is also a perception among businesspeople that people working in policy have jobs with fewer hours or less stress per hour than people working in industry. This perception may be obnoxiously off base (especially in a forum full of people who are studying policy), but if there's something to it, $63K/year for a 50 hour/week job beats $90K/year for an 80 hour/week job. I can say that a lot of the jobs taken by MBAs are often higher stress jobs that are often 70, 80, even 90 hours per week.

You sound like a candidate for a degree in Operations Research/ Industrial Engineering/Logistics. What is your math background? Most STEM graduates are qualified to get an ORFE MS. B-school will be difficult to get into straight from undergrad without any work experience, but ORFE will take you. You can always do an MBA later, and an ORFE MS does not disqualify you from a PhD.

The MBA is a bit of a minus, but Chicago, Cornell, and Columbia are not out of the question. Princeton may be a stretch but worth an application. Best of luck.

1.) Did anyone play Everquest or other MMORPGs growing up? (Most financial engineers are nerds and geeks) Remember how people would get in over their heads fighting orcs and then run to the zone shouting "ORC TRAIN TO ZONE!!!"? I get the sense that Revolution is going around to different forums (zones) creating troll trains. 2.) SAIS is a great program, and at $80K it is not a terrible deal. 3.) Cause and effect. People get into HBS because they have things (mostly learned skills) that help their careers, attract women, and give them confidence. It is NOT the other way around. 4.) Revolution's problems are best addressed DIRECTLY by him rather than by getting an MBA or MPA. 4 1/2.) F*** HBS. It's a school for people with better selling ability than math skills: Apologies to that one math/stats/physics undergrad Harvard MBA who is probably really pissed right now and might know probability theory as well as a quant. But this was worth it if it gets Revolution to stop obsessing about HBS. Back to my underground quant lair where I stare at a computer screen in a darkened room and mutter to myself about Ito Integrals and proving Novikov conditions. Hopefully before the MBA train to zone starts on me. ------- http://mmoplayer.wikidot.com/everquest

You told me you had friends in the program. Given that the program is mostly quants (actually, the Europeans are ALL quants), and given that only people in finance would bother being friends with quants (us and our nerdy jokes about skewness and generalized pareto distributions), that rules out a lot of people. Philosophy is one of the only things that can truly make you happy in life. You seem unhappy to me, and philosophy is probably one of the few things that is both completely impractical yet relevant to everyone.

Revolution, 1.) You have been obsessed with prestige, but when you get into an elite grad school, you don't want it. 2.) You need to do an MFE at Columbia, CMU, or Cornell. 3.) You need to get a job in finance. 4.) You need to learn to be happy with what you have, even if some people around you have more (prestige, money, success). Everyone except for Nobel Prize-winners, Bill Gates, and Barack Obama need to deal with that (even HBS alumns like Mitt Romney, even HKS profs with Bohemian Grove memberships who appear on CNN and get chased by Alex Jones.)

One trick, for postprofessional degrees (EG: MBA, MFE, JD) is that you can save money into a 401k or IRA, take a tax deduction on that, and use the IRA to pay your expenses at school. I recommend not taking on student debt for school if at all possible.

This is a terrible strategy prior to admission, but now that you have been admitted, it's a great strategy to get funding.

Expectation theory says that, with respect to applicants, no decision has been made yet. Why am I thinking of Schrodinger's cat right now?

Hi everyone. Wanted to offer a few thoughts: 1.) HKS is a great program, and public policy grad students are pretty well respected on every college campus. 2.) At Princeton, the closest MBA analogue is the MFin program. Profiles look similar to HBS- we have NASA JPL alumns, McKinsey alumns, yoga instructors, and the like. On top of that, everyone comes in with a strong math background. Guess what? Our MPAs are cooler than we are (one of them is a former Navy SEAL), and they probably have a lot more fun than we do. They certainly know how to throw really good parties. To suggest that there is some sort of hierarchy among graduate students at top schools is a bit silly. Especially when the Math and Physics PhDs have a good 10-15 IQ points on everyone. 3.) If you are interested in money, don't get a public policy degree. Get an MBA or an MFin or a Finance PhD. 4.) Better to be the brilliant guy from Berkeley or CMU than the brilliant guy from Harvard, IMO. The brilliant guy from Berkeley is a lot more approachable, and the Harvard kids know he's smarter than them.