Thanksgiving and Birthdays in Boston

Tuesday was Julia's third birthday! I had a busy day in school, but went home during my 2hr lunch break to celebrate Julia's birthday, have some cake, and watch Julia blow out candles and open her birthday presents. It was great! She had so much fun and she even joined me and Mark in singing happy birthday to herself! On Wednesday we had a birthday party for Julia and some of her best friends here in Cambridge came to celebrate. Julia chose the theme: Dora the explorer. We had Dora ballons, a Dora tablecloth, Dora plates, Dora cups, Dora napkins, and Dora giftbags for her guests. Julia also chose what to eat and drink: cupcakes and a choice between chokolate milk, apple juice, or regular milk for drinks. Nedless to say, Julia loved her birthday party!

For thanksgiving we decided not to join in the travel frenzy that most people in the US take part in at this time of the year. Instead we stayed here in Boston and on Thursday we joined with the other LFMs in town to have thanksgiving dinner. We were 32 people, 22 adults and 10 children, we each brought a dish or two for dinner. The food and company was great! It has been really nice to have a few days off from school to just relax and spend time with Mark and Julia. I have now taken Julia out running three days in a row, and I need it from all the thanksgiving food I have been eating. Here are some pictures of Julia playing during one of our running breaks at the playground on the other side of the Charles River. She loved running around in all the leafs on the ground and throwing them up in the air.

My LFM Application tips

Last year at this time I had just begun the process of applying to LFM. I thought it may be helpful to let those of you who are currently in the process of applying to LFM know what I did.

My first advice is to relax! You are probably in much better shape getting your application completed than I was.

I didn't decide to apply until beginning of November, so you are already much better prepared than I was. The first thing I did after figuring out what the application requirements were was to sign up for the GMAT and contact three people I had chosen for my recommendation letters. I asked my current manager, one former manager, as well as one of my undergraduate professors for recommendation letters. I also requested my official transcripts to be sent to MIT.

I then studied for the GMAT. I only had a couple of weekends to devote to studying so I decided to focus my studies on the language sections since English is my second language. I took the GMAT on November 28th, and I did OK. I actually did really well on the language portion, but not as well on the math. So the lesson learned here is that using the GMAT study guides is very helpful and you can really boost your score through studying. Just make sure you have enough time to study for all the sections!

After taking the GMAT I had almost 3 weeks to write my essays and fill in the application. First I focused on the essays. I made sure I answered the essay questions and I used fairly recent examples (within the last year or so). I felt it was important to be myself, and not try to be something I'm not. I wrote about real experiences that were important to me and that would give a picture of different aspects of myself. I sent my rough drafts to my manager and to a few family members to proofread, and they provided lots of good feedback. I highly recommend utilizing friends, co-workers, and family to proofread your essays. I would advice not to hire a professional service. Instead pick people that are close to you, that care about you, and most importantly will give you their honest opinion. They will be happy to help you out, and they will probably feel honored that you chose to ask them for their feedback.

The last couple of days before the deadline I spent filling in the application form and finally I submitted the application the night before the deadline.

I only had one glitch, the GMAT people didn't grade my test in the promised time so I didn't have my official scores. I contacted the LFM office and they instructed me to just enter my unofficial scores in the application.

So what happens after you have submitted your application? Well, a few weeks later I received an invitation to attend the LFM interview fest. Interview fest happens in January and it is a lot of fun and gives you tons of great information. I never had a chance to visit LFM and MIT during the fall, so this was a great opportunity to meet the current LFM students and chat with the other candidates.

I prepared for the interviews by going through behavioral type interview questions and thinking of examples from my past that would be a good fit for the different questions. I also scheduled mock interviews with two of my managers, who luckily for me were also LFM alumni. If you can do this it helps to boost your confidence and to make sure that you have developed good "stories" to tell the interviewer about your experiences.

I hope this was at least a bit helpful. If you have any questions regarding the LFM applications or interviews, please feel free to contact me. Also, two of my classmates, Aimee and Sean, have posted some really helpful tips on their blogs that you should definitely check out if you want more information.

Good luck!

Check out this LFM video.....

.....my classmates and professors are in it....I'm in it too!

Click on this link:

http://mitsloan.mit.edu/mba/index.php

and go to the "Introducing the people of LFM" link to watch the video.

Midterms, SIP week, and jetlag

Midterms are over and it feels good! I took two midterms the week before last. For those of you that are from other countries and may not know what a midterm is, midterms are just like a final exam but it takes place in the middle of the semester and only covers the material from the first half of the semester. Luckily for me I didn't have midterms in all nine of my courses, only in two: Financial Accounting and Economic Analysis for Business decisions. For Financial Accounting I barely had time to complete the exam, but neither did the rest of the class, so I don't feel too bad about that. The Econ exam was much better, but I also like econ much more than accounting. I think econ makes more sense, plus you get to use some basic calculus which I enjoy (I know, I'm a nerd). I have great respect for the people in my family who have chosen accounting as their profession (Mark, Maris, Addis, Eva). I sure couldn't do it for a living, although I am glad I'm taking the class as it helps me better "speak" accounting

Last week was SIP week (Sloan Innovation Period), which means that our regiular MBA classes are put on hold for one week while the other Sloanies take special seminar classes. For us LFMs it means that since we don't have any MBA class es for a week, we only have engineering classes to attend. LFMs don't have to take the special seminars since we already take so many special classes through the LFM progam such as several Leadership classes, plant trek, etc. The timing of SIP week could not have been any better for me, as my really good friends in Sweden Fredrik and Katarina had planned to get married Oct 27 during SIP week! So Mark, Julia, and I left for Sweden on Monday night, spent a few hectic but fun days with family and friends in Stockholm, attended the wedding on Saturday, and flew back to Cambridge on Sunday. Some of the highlights of this quick visit was meeting Viktor (my cousins 3 week old super cute baby), and finding out that two of my very best friends are also expecting their first child!

Speaking about families......A couple of weeks ago we had an interesting Organizational Process and Career Core joint session where we discussed work life balance. The class discussion was good, and it was nice to hear all the different opinions and experiences in the class. I think I got all my class participation points in one class. One thing that struck me during the class conversation was the difference in choices you have to make if you have a family in the US versus Sweden. I decided to do a bit of research to find out more of the differences. I found some information online but the majority I learned through conversations with my Swedish friends and family during our visit to Stockholm last week.

Several of my friends and family in Sweden have just had their first child, or is expecting their first child in a few months. I personally don't believe the extremely high tax pressure in Sweden is good, but when you have kids in Sweden you definitely get much of what you have paid or will pay in taxes back in benefits. Tough luck for the people that choose not to have kids, or are unable to have kids. They end up paying for everyone else taking advantage of tons of non-working time as a parent!

To start off the comparison, in Sweden parents are allowed 18 months of parental leave, for 13 months of which they are entitled to 80 % of their work salary. I have heard that many companies will pay the remaining 20% of your salary as a company benefit. The 18 months of parental leave can be split between the parents, and parental leave can be taken by either parent, but the other parent must take at least two months. Another interesting fact is that in Sweden, all parents are entitled to parental benefits whether or not they are working.

In contrast, parental benefits in the US consist of 3 months maternity leave at 0% pay, which means that if a mother is fortunate enough to be able to afford not to get paid for 12 weeks, she can stay home with her child for 12 weeks without loosing her job. This has the effect that most working mothers in USA have to choose between either going back to work after taking 6 weeks of short term disability leave (that is if she has been paying the extra short term disability premium while pregnant - short term disability pays for about 100% of salary), or have one parent quit their job to stay home with the child. The latter option is of course only viable if the mother or her husband/partner are fortunate enough that they can afford to have one of them quit their work to stay home with the child.

Another nice thing with the parental benefits in Sweden is that the parent does not have to take the whole parental leave period in one stretch. It can be taken at the full rate for one year, at a half rate for two years, a quarter rate for four years or even at an eighth rate for eight years. The only rule is that the leave has to be taken by the time the child is eight years old or you loose the unused leave.

The third very nice parental benefit in Sweden is that daycare and preschool is heavily subsidised by the government. The daycare or preschool charge for the parents is 3 % of their income for the first child, 2 % for the second child, and 1 % of their income for the third. In addition, there is a maximum charge a so called "maxtaxa" such that no matter how much money the parent makes they can never be charged more than about $200 per month per child for daycare.

Mark and I have been researching preschools for Julia here in Cambridge, and we found that a typical preschool charges the parents $100 per child per day. In Sweden, childcare places are so heavily subsidised that the average parent pays only 8 % of the true cost. Of course this means that taxation has to be much higher than in other countries, Sweden's tax revenue is over 50 % of GDP while in the US it is about 25% of GDP. But it also means that almost no Swedish parent feels that they cannot afford to put their child in childcare.

Most parents in Sweden usually take turns to stay home with their child(ren) while the children are young and then return to work when their children are between 1 and 2 years old. The Swedish parental benefits means that Sweden has a higher percentage of working women than most other countries, close to 80% of Swedish women work, compared to about 60% in the US. While Swedish women are more likely to work than US women, it is much more rare to find a woman in the most lucrative or powerful jobs in Sweden compared to in other countries such as the US. According to the OECD about half of working women in Sweden have public sector jobs such as teachers, nurses, and civil servants compared to about 20% of female workers in the US. "Private-sector employers are less willing to deal with the disruption caused by very long maternity leaves," says Manuela Tomei, a labor sociologist with the International Labor Organization in Geneva. "Gender discrimination in Sweden may be more subtle, but it is very much there.""

Employers in Sweden must not only plan for how to survice their employees long summer vacations, but also plan for how to deal with the chance/risk of having their employees being out on parental-leave. The Swedish government has succeeded in making it very difficult for employers to plan for their employees taking parental leave. I found out during my dinner conversation at Fredrik and Katarinas wedding that by law, an employee in Sweden only has to give their employer two weeks notice of their intent to utilize parental leave benefits. What this means is that if I worked in Sweden and I had for example 6 months of unused parental leave left, I could tell my employer that in two weeks and one day I would be taking a 6 month parental leave from work and my employer couldn't do anything about it!

If I ever had a "brain fart" and attempted to pull something like that in the U.S. I would be the joke of the office. If I was granted the 6 months off, I definitely would not have a job to come back to after the 6 months, and I wouldn't be paid a penny during the 6 months off. Talk about differences!

Maybe next time I'll discuss differences in the school system......