Life in Stanford comes to us like a bullet train. Before we know it's already two months into the program. For all the Sloans, it's unlikely we will ever come back to universities in a lengthy classroom setting again. How to make the most out of this 12-month campus life is the overarching question for all.
Confession of a Stanford Sloan Fellow Series EP06
Study Group
The least we can do is to make a few friends we can always fall back to in the 5-person study group
Some groups study together (reading textbooks/doing homework); some groups only meet for discussion. Whichever way is choose, don't overkill on doing the coursework. They're necessary to fulfill course requirement and internalize the new knowledge, but after a certain point you'll only see diminishing return. Most of the cases are pretty interesting and I can easily dive into them for ten hours without boring myself but that's probably not the reason why I came to Stanford.
Sloan Class
The easiest way to make more friends in the class is to hang out in the GSB Sloan Lounge, and keep the door open (so far my observation is that most Sloans tend to keep the door closed). We are lucky to have this lounge area with 6-7 study rooms for Sloans' exclusive use. Make the best use of them while we can.
Attend TGIF (Thanks-God-It's-Friday). From a pure utilitarian perspective it has probably the highest benefit-to-cost ratio.
Attend social events organized by your hard-working social chairs
Run for Social Chairs
Stanford Graduate School of Business
The GSB-wide BBLs(Brown Bag Lunch) could be a good venue to meet with the MBAs.
There will be two mixer events for the Sloans organized by the MBA Liaison Chairs
Starting from Fall Quarter, some classes will be a mixer of Sloans and MBAs, while some classes will be strictly for Sloans. Talk to Academic Operation to find out which classes will have MBAs.
Join GSB student clubs. MBA is the main driving force behind all the GSB-wide clubs.
Run for MBA Liaison Chairs (2 position) if you're single.
Stanford University
There are many talks/seminars throughout the campus.
There are many house parties organized by each EV apartment. Our neighbors are students from other schools. Stanford has a beautiful campus and most students choose to live on campus. University of Chicago, Columbia, or Yale can never compete with Stanford in this area. After living in Cambridge, MA for four years, I think MIT and Harvard also pale in comparison to Stanford's campus community. Somehow I always miss the ice cream party of Hoskins Midrise. What a shame.
Play sports (like pick-up basketball games) in Ford Center or Arrillaga Center.
Choose courses from other schools like Engineering, Design or Law
Stanford's Continued Studies offers amazing classes to the public (for a fee). Sloans can attend them for free. I wish I had 48 hours a day just so that I could attend those wonderful and fascinating courses (many are non-business-related).
Silicon Valley
This is the main reason many students come to Stanford Sloan. Meetup.com is striving and used by many local interest groups from technology start-ups to investments to karaoke parties.
Startup Digest is the one everybody reads. Go subscribe it. It's free. Its daily email lists out all the events around the valley.
Rekindle relationship with local friends, long-lost class/school-mates. In Beijing the startup circle is rather hierarchical. You need to be senior enough in the company (director/VP and above) to break into circles that matter. In the valley it appears to have a flatter pecking order. Many people are engineers/coders, but they can still be very well connected.
Attend TechCrunch's Disrupt event. This is one of the biggest events in the valley with the most stellar line-up of speakers. Usually its ticket (for 4-5 day) goes for nearly \$3,000, but for students it has a discounted price of only $300. Take advantage of this.