Bearsden

Just found out that my brother-in-law is in Bearsden. No, I am not really sure what he does.

Postponing scotland again

Once again, we are officially not going to Strathclyde this Autumn. With a new and wonderful person about to enter our lives, my wife and I feel we better take the safest route economically speaking. I will keep pluggin away at the Master's degree part-time and perhaps look at pursuing a Ph. D or DBA down the road. That would be at the earliest, 4 years from now. Thanks all for writing very informative and frank blogs about life in Glasgow.

I will not post anymore in this blog but will leave it up just in case it might somehow prove useful to someone someday.

I now return to my much neglected regular blog http://augmento1.blogspot.com/

Mrs. Augmento is pregnant!

This is a good thing! It complicates things a bit but we are still looking forward to Glasgow. I have been rummaging through this website www.citylets.co.uk for places to rent. I am a bit disappointed by the lack of photos and the lack of details about each property.

1st choice is http://www.citylets.co.uk/aspx/details.aspx?pid=79704&aid=129&footer
has carpeting

support

Well, Mrs. Augmento and I had a conversation about just how difficult things were going to be for her and just how much time I would have to commit to an intense 1 year MBA. It did not end well. She can not raise our son without my direct time support and I can not complete the programme if I am expected to continue or increase the amount of time I spend with our son. So, once again, in a moment of clarity and faced with the difficulty of the year we have planned in Glasgow, her commitment has waivered.

class schedule

I couldn't find anything like a day in the life of a strathclyde MBA. I did stumble across this http://strathclyde-business-school.blogspot.com/ where the poster suggested that a typical day consists of " Classes start at 9AM in the morning and usually go on till 5PM. Once classes are over you would need to engage in group work in allocated teams as a large part of assessments is on team-based projects. So after classes its usually a few hours of group work preparing for presentations, solving cases or writing up assignments. "

That is really going to cut into my family time for the first 9 months of the course. This is going to be tough on the wife and son.

Strathclyde eligible for US government student aid

results from http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/FOTWWebApp/FSLookupServlet

FC is "Foreign Country" in the drop down list.

Results of the School Code Search for the city of "glasgow" in the state of "FC" for the 2009-2010 School Year
We found 4 match(es) that meet(s) your search criteria. The resulting list of schools is sorted by school name in ascending order.
GLASGOW SCHOOL OF ART167 RENFREW STREETGLASGOWFederal School Code: G25457

ROYAL SCOTTISH ACAD MUSIC & DRAMA100 RENFREW STREETGLASGOWFederal School Code: G30887

UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW**GLASGOWFederal School Code: G08383

UNIVERSITY OF STRATHCLYDERICHMOND STREETGLASGOWFederal School Code: G09808

Strathclyde still more cost effective

So, I redid the numbers and Strathclyde still comes out ahead on the ROI calculations. The tuition is just low enough to make up the difference in cost for child care.

My selection criteria started with the Financial Times Rankings http://www.ft.com/ of top 100 MBA programs.
1) I looked at what schools had 1 year programs.
2) My GMAT score was 550. I didn't really put a lot of time into studying for the GMAT because I really wanted a program that was more interested in seasoned professionals. So, I then looked at schools that didn't specify a min GMAT over 550 or had verbage that suggested they were looking for more experienced applicants.
3) Then, I eliminated all the ones that I flat out knew I couldn't afford or that would take more than 20 years to pay off in the ROI calculations.
4) Then I did something really stupid. I included the Economist's EIU rankings. I went to Curtin in Perth (Australia) in March of 2007 Perth was nice. The Curtin MBA absolutely sucked. Between trying to find a place in the middle of mining boom and lecturers who couldn't be bothered to even change the label on the material from what they were teaching the undergraduates, and lots of little things. i withdrew on the assurance that I would get a FULL refund. A few months later they only refunded half the money. Disheartened, I went back to work and decided to try doing an MBA part-time. It just hasn't worked out. My priority is family and when I get home in the evening I am happy to spend time with my wife and son. I figure my son is only going to be interested in hanging out with Dad for a few more years and I want to be there for him. I haven't had a job that will let me work on an MBA at my desk so here I am looking at a full-time MBA again.