Krannert School of Management’s Website Gets a New Look and Feel

It seems a new Krannert Masters website launched today (or recently). The new address is at http://masters.krannertlife.com. I really like the new look, it’s simple, it’s bold and it tells a story of how a Krannert MBA can really help shape one’s career. While this post is about the website redesign, I feel the redesign is part of a bigger story and that is, the Krannert School of Management has had a very crazy past few years.

I joined the Krannert MBA program at Purdue University in 2009 and the school was ranked #32, the following year it dropped to #34 and the year I graduated, it tanked to #49. I have no idea what it will rank this year, hopefully at least top 40 based on my classes performance and hopefully we trend up now. Anyway, I do recall a lot of changes the program was going through in regard to the website, new curriculum and the search for a new Dean.

I remember when they first “relaunched” the new website, it was really awful. Combining the color Blue with Black & Gold made the website look ridiculous, unprofessional and showed a lack of taste. It took 3-6 months to prove the webmasters that they were wrong, it took another 6 months to refine even more aspects of the “new” website and finally another 6-9 months to get this new site done. It’s amazing how the administration finally decided to push the Krannert MBA Program’s website to www.krannertlife.com. What a solid idea. Kudos to Jake and Gareth, whom I’m sure had a big role in this change. I gotta say though, whoever controller the strategy of the website up until recently was extremely stubborn and probably had to be proven wrong before this launch went live. I tried in vain to get the website changed since there was a lot of criticism about it when it went live the summer of 2010 and offered my services in SEO and SEM for free to help boost our rankings for the term “MBA” and help market the program better, but faculty just wouldn’t listen and didn’t appreciate the help. Thank goodness the class of 2012 was ambitious and relentless and had a talented Developer.

While the program definitely has had a rollercoaster of a ride these past few years, I firmly believe that a solid foundation has been set. The Krannert School of Management has a new Dean, the new curriculum that my class entered into has been improved, the website has been redone and it looks professional and polished and finally, at least I hope, my class (2011) helped pave the way for higher rankings this next Spring. I’m proud to be a Krannert MBA and will always be proud of the Krannert School of Management and Purdue University, I just hope the faculty & administration will start listening to the students more. Cheers to the new website redesign! Boiler up!

Krannert School of Management

Fantasy Baseball and stuff

With my MBA basically done (1 final left!), I’ve had a bit of free time, so recently I’ve really gotten into Fantasy Baseball. Actually, I find it more interesting than Fantasy Football because it’s day-to-day as opposed to weekly.

I also purchased my first video game since Call of Duty: Black Ops (which I still haven’t beaten yet)… Mortal Kombat for the PS3. To be honest, the graphics are pretty disappointing. I play on my 720P projector so the screen size is about 70-80 inches and so far compared to the other PS3 games I’ve played, I just think it was either rushed or they really need to hire some new graphic artists. The gameplay is decent but the storyline is really bad. I really think they could have made it a lot better, it’s just silly I think.

Snow Day!

Never thought I’d get a snow day as a graduate student! 🙂 Then again, the weather was pretty horrible last night… it took 2 hours to get from Indianapolis to West Lafayette!

2nd Year, Module 3

So my final semester at Krannert begins on Monday, January 10, 2011. It will be the start of module 3 where I’ll be taking:

-Strategic Cost Management
-Mobile & Ubiquitous Commerce
-International Financial Management

I’m pretty pumped about the classes I’m taking since I think all 3 classes will be very applicable and helpful. I was reading over the syllabus for Mobile & Ubiquitous Commerce and I think it’s great that we’ll be talking a lot about the technology innovations and such in the mobile industry. It’ll also be nice to get back into accounting and build on my finance knowledge.

10/10/10

I would have to say the biggest reason I decided to train for and run the Chicago marathon was because it was on 10/10/10. I was on my way to the Chicago airport for my study abroad trip to China this past March when I got a text or call from someone about the Chicago marathon and they noted that it was on 10/10/10… when I heard that, I was sold. I mean, I ran cross-country and track in junior high and high school, so the idea of training more miles a week for a longer event didn’t seem to bad. Also, 10/10/10 is just fun to say, when people ask, it’s always nice to say “it’s on 10/10/10.”

I haven’t run a marathon before so I’m not sure what to expect but I am confident that if my IT band doesn’t hurt during the race (hopefully it’s fully healed by now), I’ll be fine and I might be able to do somewhat decent near the end. I’ll start pretty slow and see how I do as the race progresses.

I got my marathon gear all ready and I head for Chicago tomorrow morning. It’s going to be quite the weekend because the day after the marathon, I’ll have an all-day interview and then I have a final the following day. Thursday afternoon at 4:15 PM will be a good day when I’m done with my last final for module 1!