Of clubs and more clubs

Hi
One of the great traits about a prospective MBA candidate is his confidence to lead. I have rarely come across an MBA candidate who thinks that he cannot lead a team/company. This is a great trait to have except that it comes with its baggage of problems. One of them concerns 'MBA clubs'.

NUS MBA has a number of number of clubs in theory but very few in practise. The nus mba site currently shows a list of 9 clubs. Click http://www.bschool.nus.edu/Programs/MBA/studentlife.htm for the details. And I don't think this list is updated. I have seen more clubs - Knowledge Management club and Partners club - to name a couple more. However, during my time at NUS I have seen only 3 to 4 clubs which have a constant stream of activity. In a purely cynical way, I am tempted to think how many of these clubs were started as a fad or to boost someone's resume. It could also be the result of the MBA trait that I spoke about - the inherent belief about the ability to lead a group of people.

When students join NUS there is a rush towards these clubs. It is common to see people being a part of 3 to 4 clubs. This is again a result of that MBA trait - the belief that we can lead anyone. Another reason is that it looks good on the resume. In my own experience, it is possible to be an active participant in one club and two at the most. Anything beyond this magic number becomes a drag on our time. The initial rush towards multiple clubs was followed by a constant decline in membership at club meetings. And towards the end of the semester, clubs were filtered down to their core members. These were the people who were truely interested in the welfare of the club.

The seniors had warned me about this trend. Though I restricted myself to one club - Finance Club, I still succumbed to this trend. I was interested in the Entrepreneurship Club but nothing much happened in that space. So, it was Finance Club for me, driven my interest in getting into the Financial Services industry. During the semester, I also involved myself in Cerebration (our business case competition) and MAFIA (Marketing and Admission team of NUS). To be honest, some of this was in part driven by a need to make my resume look better and in part driven by my interest. For Cerebration, I was a part of the case-writing team. But I never justified that work. The first semester was too busy and I had put my hands into too many things. Similarly, MAFIA started out with a bang but then fizzed out. This was an initiative by the NUS MBA office and I had volunteered to be the leader. Though the initiative still exists, it is still to take off. The NUS MBA office needs to define a clear strategy with this initiative. And, through no fault of mine, I am yet to justify my role in MAFIA. I did manage to be actively involved with the Finance Club throughout the semester. I attended most of the meetings and participated in club activities. Besides the Fin club, I took care of the NUS MBA blog. So, these were my small contributions towards NUS. And my attempt at proving that MBA trait called "leadership".

Which was the most active club during the semester? I thought that the Finance Club was the most active. We had a FinXplorer Series wherein we brought in speakers from across the sphere of finance. We had a stock picking competition which was a simulated Trading game. The Consulting club had 'Consultant Unplugged' which was a table conference of consultants on their views on the profession. The Marketing guyz ran a Marketing competition. There was an inter-collegiate quiz run by the Knowledge Management guyz. The Entrepreneurship club did some work with A-star which is an incubator cell at NUS. Beyond these there is nothing I can remember.

In naval terms, NUS MBA has a number of clubs but only a few have the captain to steer them ahead and the passengers interesting in travelling in that ship. Anyone wanting to come aboard, should limit themselves to one ship - at the most two. Anything more and you will probably get lost in the high seas.

Cheers,
Suraj