 Hello everybody and thank you for joining our SCM panel webinar. My name is Robert Cummings. I'm the academic administrator for the SCM program. With me today I have four great students here to give you their perspectives on the SCM program, highlights of student life, academic advice that they've learned so far, and what you can expect from the SCM program. We will also be taking questions throughout the webinar, so submit in the Zoom chat and I will happily feed them along to the students here. Just a quick brief summary. We offer two programs here at SCM, the 10 month residential program and the five month blended program. Both programs lead to either a master's in applied science or a master of engineering. The residential program follows a more traditional path with classes and research done in person on campus between September and May. The blended program requires five online courses via the edX MicroMasters credential in supply chain management followed by five months of classes here on campus between January and May. So now we're here in February deep into the program. So with that I will turn it over to the students to introduce themselves and then we'll go over some questions about academic life and obviously answer questions from the audience. So Brett take it away. Hi friends my name is Brett Elgersma. I'm originally from a very small town in Minnesota. After my stint in high school I chose to join the Navy, so I was in the Navy for five years right after high school and after I got out of the Navy I went back to college and got a bachelor's degree in supply chain management at Iowa State. After school I worked for a few years with supply chain systems in an agriculture company in Iowa before leaving to pursue my master's here at MIT. Hey everyone my name is Colleen Copely and I am from a town about 45 minutes south of Boston called Mansfield so I'm a local. I did my undergraduate in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech and after graduating that I worked at GE Power for the last four years on a leadership development program and I am one of the four of us who's on the blended program here at MIT. Hi everybody I'm Trevor Thompson. I'm actually from Arizona so I might be the farthest one from Massachusetts. I went to Arizona State University and I got a bachelor in supply chain management as well as in marketing. Then I ended up working in a kind of a weird path. I ended up working at a bank JPMorgan Chase for the last three years before coming over here to the residential program. Hey guys all around us out I'm Tony Orr from Indiana so yes Trevor you are the furthest away from here originally. Boston is home for me now but I did my undergrad in industrial engineering at Purdue University following that I went and worked with PepsiCo in a leadership development program as well. I did that for two years and then decided to pursue my master's here at MIT through the residential program. So I will get the ball started with a few questions that I had prepared. First one is what led you to make the decision to attend MIT? A decision hopefully lots of students can make. So I actually didn't learn about this program until the last semester of my senior year in undergrad and I learned about the school that I went to sponsored a supply chain excellence program that I applied for and actually won. Even after I won that supply chain excellence award I wasn't totally sure that I was going to come to MIT. But after working for a few years in industry I was really looking for another challenge and I knew that I wanted to get beyond sort of procedural roles and wanted to get more into working with people and developing ideas and processes and things like that and I remembered about this convenient award that I won and did a lot more research on the program here at MIT and it just really seemed like the right fit to help me take my career to the next step that I wanted to take it to. So I learned about this program through my company. We had the leadership development program like I said and it was one of the things they recommended we pursue just because it is such a great school and such a great opportunity. My leadership program was very focused on operations and manufacturing and being here is really giving me the layer of supply chain and strategy that I didn't get as much. So it's been really really great to be able to make the decision to come here with all these great people and definitely the people and the layers I didn't have in my career yet that I could get that educational foundation on was the reason for me. So mine was similar to Brett at the beginning during my senior year at ASU. I actually heard about the supply chain excellence award. I was also one of the winners and then Tony's gonna repeat that again. So that got the ball rolling. I actually took my first attempt at the GMAT my senior year, the first of two because I had to retake it. You should study. But at that point I was, I knew I wanted to do three years in a masters either an MBA or a master's program. I want to be a professor one day so I wanted to that factor in my decision because I want to teach supply chain management and it made more sense for me to come to a specified degree like this. I also my learning curve sort of stagnated after a couple years working in operations and then I realized I wanted to switch industries and sort of get that technical knowledge back that I sort of had lost from being out of school. And the final thing that sold me was actually coming here about a year before school started and just sitting in on a couple classes and seeing campus and it was just a phenomenal experience. So it's been worth it. So like Brett and Trevor, I did learn about the program prior to even considering attending. So I was a supply chain excellence board winner as well on my senior at Purdue and for me this transition made sense to move from my career as an individual contributor to more of a manager or a team-based collaborative role. So part of the development that I was going through in my career and in industry was stepping through different roles within operations and strategy to figure out where I could best contribute but then also understanding where as a leader that next step for me was. So developmentally this really made sense for a one-year program. It was either this or B school for me which I think everybody in the program would say the same thing. But this program has resonated being ranked number one in the world is kind of a it's pretty good selling point. Also the crew of people you get to network with and go to class with are also a great selling point for this program as well. So moving on to some of the academic components of the program. What would you say is your favorite class so far and why? I know we just started classes the spring term so it's a tough one. Does anybody got to say this? So my favorite class so far has been system dynamics which might sound a little weird. So system dynamics is was developed here at MIT and for me it was just a completely different way of thinking. It was I think a lot of times in my previous life it's you make the best decision today without thinking about the repercussions tomorrow and system dynamics whether you're talking about business or healthcare any sort of anything there's system dynamics in almost every aspect of your life and when you think about the consequences of the actions or the policies that you implement and think about what the long-term ramifications would be and it leads you to think a little bit differently. I'm going to say a MicroMasters one because I know you guys haven't done that. So I think my favorite course because I just got here about a month ago because I did the blended program but my favorite MicroMasters course was SC4x where we learn a lot about digitization and machine learning. For me I was doing a little bit of that in my role at the time while I was taking the MicroMasters and it was really difficult for me to grasp what we were doing as I was learning it but having the SC4x foundation under my belt really was able to help me challenge certain perspectives understand where maybe the digital team and the operations team weren't agreeing and be able to help them kind of knock down some barriers that were up at that point so that really broadened my horizons to understand how things like digitization that are really going to be disruptors in supply chain factor into a very operational and manufacturing role that I wasn't at the time. I was much fancier than my answer. So actually a lot of the core supply chain classes are in the spring so we've just started a lot of those and I'm actually going to go with the class it's not supply chain because I think that's a big part of the program like you do have all these core supply chain classes but you can still make it your own experience just like an MBA. You might not be here for two years but you can still I've taken five or six classes outside of supply chain and last semester I think my favorite class was Global Politics and Economics and that was because I was completely ignorant of the subject and the people like who are actually the professors one of them negotiated NAFTA with Trump and the other one was somebody who'd worked in like the World Economic Forum and had all this experience and so every single class I was just getting blasted with knowledge that I probably should have known some of and then I realized how ignorant I was on you know just everything and it was just a very enlightening class very fun and I'm expecting that might change this semester particularly looking forward to procurement and sustainability so we'll see. So I'll be the one that speaks to an actual supply chain class since that's the program we're in uh no but they they all talk about very good program or class you can take outside of supply chain as well. For me as previously mentioned learning that management step and how supply chain actually impacts the bottom line and the finances of the business so supply chain finance in the fall um with Jim Rice was one of my favorite courses he does go teach at the scale network as well um but I think it's foundational to understand how all the decisions that we make within the supply chain organization actually influence what finance has to report out for for the business and I think for us coming from a strategical and tactical operational background into this program I guess I could speak for me myself on this one um understanding what that meant in terms of dollars moving through the business and how I could really drive savings and and that sort of thing so supply chain finance for me was my favorite course in the fall was yet to be determined for the spring. Excellent so moving away from academics and thinking of um some of the experiences you've had at MIT uh what uh opportunities have you explored either in Boston the MIT community that yeah so one thing different about me than the other three is I I have two-year-old twins here so um my extracurriculars look a little bit different but with I think the really cool thing about being in Boston is that there's something for everybody um there's plenty of fun to be had but if you have a family or depending on what you're interested in there's a lot of museums there's a lot of history here uh when the weather is nice there are a ton of parks and um just trails it's a very active city so I think something that I've gotten really interested in is actually just exploring the different the different parks in Boston and taking my kids to go see different parks and things like that so that's awesome so one of my favorite things since I only got here about a month ago was how welcoming the residential class was to the blended class um they have so many groups for so many different things um we have a basketball group we have a wine club group we have a trivia group we have all these different groups of just different cohorts of people who enjoy different things and it was overwhelming to be invited to these 20 different groups we have on telegram um with our whole class so that's been really fun just meeting people and getting to know them in those kind of um classification settings like we had a wine night last night and it was great and I met a bunch of new people and got to know everyone better so really leveraging what the residential people learned in the fall while I wasn't here um has really helped us fit in much quicker I think yeah yeah I was at the wine wine night too that was very fun um I think uh I'm gonna go with something sort of academic but sort of not um so we all while we're here we have to do a thesis or a capstone and I'm doing a capstone and mine's very unique in the sense that I'm not working with a big company and we're actually working with small businesses in Latin America and my partner I actually got to travel out to uh Bucaramanga Columbia last semester and stay there for four days and we got to shadow local companies we got to actually give a presentation in Spanish where I had a script because I don't know Spanish um and it was awesome it was great I got to meet so many different people we got to see how business works really for you know 99% of the people in Latin America um and it was just a great experience um and there are awesome opportunities like that some people went to Switzerland and uh where'd you go yeah he went to Switzerland um and someone went to France as well so some really cool experiences where you get to travel so I'll speak a little bit on extracurricular activities that sponsor through the school because I think being back in academia it's one thing coming back out of industry understanding that school is also trying dynamic and bringing in your networking experiences so I'm actually helping helping organize the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference which is a world renowned conference that they have they host every year in Boston um my passion outside of academia and supply chain is sports 100% that's what I do with the majority of my time when I leave here aside spending time with my newlywed wife um but yeah yeah um but there's just there's abundant amount of opportunities to get involved here on campus I think there's over like 800 student-led organizations you can get involved in there's there's little niches for every single interest that you could potentially have like Colleen mentioned our class being 86 now is very close for about a month of knowing each other that's because it's because we share interest um but also the opportunity to network through MIT outside of just a supply chain program I think is one of the vital things that you can do outside of academics and classroom work that is a cool opportunity here uh so one more question um what piece of advice would you tell a prospective applicant or an incoming student that you wish you would have known when you came um so well just my personality I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I'm a I'm definitely a planner so I like things to be well known ahead of time which is antithetical to the way that MIT does things as far as the administrative process at MIT everything's kind of last minute maybe by design um so it's probably totally different than any other education experience that you've ever had I remember freaking out when I didn't you know found out I was getting into MIT but I didn't have a housing lined up then I didn't have all my classes selected and all these things and um an interesting thing about selecting classes is actually you register for classes after they start almost so not quite but it's pretty close so um one thing that I wish that I would have known prior to even applying to MIT was uh just relax MIT knows what they're doing um it's hard to change overnight and not stress out but everything's gonna work out fine because I'm I stressed out but I'm still here to make that so this is a good question this is a hard question um I would say my my one piece of advice is come in with a couple different things that you expect to get out of the program and expect them to change um because when I came here I was like I'm gonna get great academics I'm gonna take great classes I'm gonna have a great job but really what I you know those are all great too so really what I'm learning is what I'm learning is like I'm gonna meet great people I'm gonna experience great new things I'm gonna really broaden my horizon socially with leadership all these different things so I would say what I thought I was gonna get out of this program was very kind of like what you can read online about MIT very like on paper this excellent program but what I'm realizing I'm getting out of it now is just so much more and very different than what I expected and just being open to that and being excited about that Eileen kind of stole my thunder there because I agree with everything you just said aside from studying for the GMF or taking the MicroMasters in order to get in I'd say one thing that I wish I knew was that at least personally I really wanted to get a good balance of meeting people and taking classes and I took 67 credits last semester which is a lot you only need to take 45 a semester I did fine I think I would have chosen maybe some different classes at the beginning because I was focused on okay you know instead of what do I really want to take what am I really interested in I was like oh I need to take this you know for one particular aspect of my career but one thing I've heard from all the alumni from all the guest speakers from my own experience is have fun and do what you want to do you know take the classes that will help you but also take a couple fun ones I'm taking leading and ambiguity in the next half and I'm very excited for that so just you know really maybe step out of your comfort zone do a couple classes you really want to do or think you would challenge you so I'm going to be the summer guy because everybody's already taken off the good ones but I think I think if we look at this common theme is that's perspective and balance is something that we we try and keep in perspective with each other throughout as we go there's so many things that you want to do when you're at MIT or back in school it's one of the best universities you can go to in the entire world you're with 86 new people that have diverse experiences and there's so much knowledge to be shared and there's so many classes you want to take and get involved extracurricularly and balance with family life and everything else and do the city so in 10 months for us residential and five for blended I think one thing that I would stress if you're considering the program and wanting to get involved is is understanding where your balance point is I think it's very common with graduate programs that burnout is a conversation that a lot of a lot of students have with each other with advisors and sponsors so I'm just finding that balance for yourself understanding what you want to get out of this program I think that's a great point coming here knowing I want to get this this and this for me it was finance management and leadership I mean that's why I want to go with my career but also now I'm as I reflect when you look back it's all these other things that you didn't expect to get that you're actually really enjoying so just finding that right sense of balance and spending your time wisely I think is one of the key stressor for some of us here well we have a few questions from the audience that we'll take a stab at answering so one first one was are there any students with 10 plus years of work experience or what sort of work experience do you have so I will say in terms of the two programs the residential program is geared towards younger professionals with maybe two to two to seven years of work experience or two to five years of work experience the blended program is an opportunity for non-traditional candidates with a lot more work experience to apply so that's definitely an avenue do any of you have want to share basically your work experience up until now before you came to the program and I never know how to answer the work experience question because since I was in the military for five years does that count or not then I had eight years of experience yeah I'm one of the elders of the group of the residential group that's true yeah from the residential group but I mean everybody's yeah has a different experience so coming from the blended group I think I'm probably the youngest in the blender group if not like the second youngest or maybe the third youngest but most of the people have 10 15 20 like crazy amounts of experience and Trevor talked a little bit about the capstone project my capstone project I'm actually partnered with another blended student and he has 25 years experience so that relationship has been excellent because being peers with someone on his level has been such a great opportunity for me to learn from him but also there's so many things that he hasn't seen in so long that I'm seeing in my you know less director level role that we're able to kind of like vibe with each other and really help each other bridge gaps and knock down barriers that we have in our capstone project so it's really great for me to have experience and exposure and networking with people so experienced but I think if we had an experienced person here they would probably say the same getting to learn from the younger people the younger generations and see what we're inspired by see what we're getting excited about it's really great to kind of blend the two experience levels I'll probably be pretty brief I have three years of work experience Tony as well too but I will say one thing that's been really amazing is that there are these people sort of what you said that have a lot of experience there's actually someone who's in a C-suite of a company which is phenomenal to learn from them and these people are from all over the world so you have the different ages but you also have the different perspectives and different backgrounds that make learning just so exciting and just talking to them talking to everybody even though Tony is younger than me I've learned a lot from him it's only one year but like imagine you know I imagine the same thing for the people who've been working for 10-15 years so yeah awesome experience people from all different backgrounds and ages and you know we even have a professor here somebody who's a been a professor in academia and she's here now getting her own master's degree so nothing will limit you from coming here so yeah as aforementioned I am probably the youngest or one of the youngest in the entire program only having two years of work experience but I think that gives me opportunity to help being so recent and fresh out of even undergrad understanding very little about industry and what I was impacting and now being able to like she said network with people have been doing it for 25 years I'm only 25 years old so like those kind of opportunities are so unique in life to be able to work like you said as a peer with somebody like that rather than having that be up the ranks in a company and having to try and connect that way right so and these kind of opportunities in life don't present themselves very often for you to be able to network and work with people and ask questions of different backgrounds industries I don't remember the exact count of countries that we have represented in the entire program but it's over 40 countries represented in 86 individuals I mean I think that's an incredibly unique opportunity just to understand cultural barriers and differences and approaches the problems and things of in supply chain that we take for granted here that in other places are very extravagantly different I'm sure you've seen working with your capstone so I think yeah the work experience the diversities everything that this program offers is top-notch so one more one question for Trevor in particular is you mentioned your future academic aspirations possibly doing PhD would you elaborate like what you what that would look like for you yeah no great question I'm sort of taking a step back I've always wanted to I've always liked being a mentor I've liked I've taught some classes at undergrad level so I've always known that's my passion but I don't want to teach from just textbook I want to teach from experience so I'm not a hundred percent certain what area of supply chain I would want to teach or if I would want to do more introductory level but my plan is you know I got my three years I'm getting my master's degree now again part of the reason I didn't get an MBA because a lot of the senior leaders I talked to and the people who are professors nowadays they got specified degrees and the discipline they were going into my plan is to work for maybe 10 15 years then probably do a PhD while I work and maybe teach in the evenings that's sort of been the path I've seen other people take I think this master's program will help me specifically coming from like ASU which is a really good supply chain program but this is the best supply chain program for a master's program at that level so it sort of sets me apart from other people and then it will help me get into the PhD program I would like hopefully wherever I am because I would like to do it in person even if it's on the evenings or weekends and then eventually teach you know probably part time until I retire and then and then go full time from there that was great so now we have I'll address some specific questions to each of you one is more geared towards Colleen as you've done the blended program well you were pursuing the online micro masters how did you juggle working or did you have a full-time job at the same time yeah that's a great question so yes I had a full-time job at the time and I think that's honestly one of the benefits you also only pay one semester tuition which is great but yeah working full-time and taking the master's course at the same time I think the micro masters is paced really well so you only take one class at a time and each class gives you really clear expectations on how many hours per week you need to dedicate to it and it's also kind of based on your background some classes I would take me 30 minutes and I'd be done with the homework and I was like great I have so much extra time this week but some classes I would need to really dig it on because it's new to me like the finance like unit we had was completely new to me so I took you know up to 10 15 hours that week to really make sure I understood it so it's really kind of a balancing act what you have time for with your full-time job but also knowing what you have coming ahead and be like oh that finance unit I know I'm going to struggle so I need to make sure I can free up some time for myself that week but also you do get breaks in there with the classes so you know if you have you know you're going on vacation for a week and you don't want to bring your computer with you you have two weeks to complete every assignment so it's very flexible in that way you can catch up if you get behind you can also get a little bit ahead if you want to as well so definitely I think most people in the blended program work full-time and you can continue to make a salary while you're getting your master's but yeah definitely a balancing act and it's kind of individual based on your background great so now I have a question geared more towards Brett and Tony moving to MIT with spouses or children how did you balance that that family life here at MIT using MIT's resources even that is a great question um yeah so uh I'm not gonna yeah steel hoseways thunder uh for when you guys get here I'll give you a great speech but um there's so much to do at MIT that uh it's really a just a good lesson in prioritization right so there's so many things you can do you can you can study all day and all night and get straight days you can um go out and party and have fun and squeak by with B minuses um you can take part in all the extracurricular sports and do all that stuff for me um I find myself balancing between three things I try to be a really good student I don't want to squander this opportunity to be at MIT so I take academics very seriously um I also take the friendships that I'm building very seriously because they're this is my new family for life and and then I have my actual family that's here my wife and my two kids so I try to um always prioritize uh spending time with my kids while they're awake while I'm not in class or studying and then after they go to bed if I uh have more work to do then I just I can sacrifice for a year and stay up late and get by I'm a little bit of sleep to try and make all the ends meet so I that's my personal way of approaching it but I don't think there's one right or wrong way I'm sure I tried to well like I said friends friends are important to me so so I've learned a lot from Brett because uh Brett's been married significantly longer than I have seeming that I got married in June um of last year and moved here in July for this program so it's been a very fast-paced learning curve for me in terms about that part the prioritization of school and now family life right so I'm I'm we're our dynamic is very new and fresh and I think being in Boston in a new and fresh environment has definitely helped us that with that transition um she's in a gap year between some of her academics so it's she's been very supportive of this program for me which is something that I really needed um but also being able to learn from some of the other families i.e. the one sitting at the other end of the table learning how their dynamic works some of their past experiences a married couple um because I did we uprooted our lives and moved to Boston and it's the first time we've been living together in close proximity and so we're going through a lot of new things together while doing MIT while doing extracurriculars and all the other things that that pull your time away but for me um my biggest priority is my wife right now and I I try and live by that when I go to school and everything else so yes sacrifice and sleep is something that I'm more than happy to give up right now for uh to build out that family life at home can I add one more thing uh no the only thing I'm gonna add is um really for me one of the first questions was why MIT and for me I've said this from the beginning is that for me coming to MIT is a lot to do with my family I want my kids to have as good or a better life than I ever had growing up um so my wife and I we sold our house we moved our kids uh 1200 miles away from their grandparents um and we went from a three bed two and a half bathroom house that we were extremely comfortable in had a great job but we gave all that up because I knew that coming to this program would give us an even better life yet it's I think that just kind of speaks to um the positives and the benefits and my belief in this program so from a blended perspective too um a lot of the people since you're only here for five months a lot of the blended people um are not their significant others did not move with them um so my husband lives in a different state right now um there's a lot of blended people who have significant others and kids that are in different states so because it's more abbreviated um you can you can kind of get away with saying I'm gonna disappear for five months and go you know increase our families you know opportunities for success by doing this so um I think you can definitely upper your family especially if you're here for a year that would kind of stink to be away from them for so long but a lot of the blended students we do um live remotely from our significant other for these five months and then just piggybacking off of that question um how have have any of you utilized MIT's campus housing and has that helped in any way great question so I live um I live in Eastgate family housing I have a two bedroom apartment there which is nice since there's four of us um and Eastgate is awesome because it's literally across the street so when um other people come in in January shivering from their bus ride that they had to take to get here I'm still nice and warm and yeah and Tony is jealous Tony is jealous um I live off campus so I tried the on-campus thing but because I moved out here very prior to the program starting in August I moved in July so campus housing wasn't available yet so I went through the off-campus process and I actually live in Boston um my mornings are not as flattering as Brett's where he gets up and walks two minutes to class I get up and I have a 45 minute commute um on public transportation which to me is not really been too much of a transition I mean I considered as part of a commute to work when you all commute to work every day so this is at some point in time you are traveling um it's just trying to find the right priorities to set when I'm on the tee trying to figure out what I can do and be productive like talking to Robert some days when we get out at the same time um but I think the on-campus on-campus housing MIT has got all the resources you need um I'll let Trevor speak to it a little bit more since he does also live on campus fun fact Trevor got nominated as the president of his graduate living dorm last night even though he's not going to be here next year yeah friends um I wasn't even there when that happened um but yeah so I live in a I've been here for six months now seven months now and uh I live in the Sydney Pacific dorms um and a lot of the dorms like right next to each other she was in the dorm right next to me she'll talk about it um it's it's really nice it's actually the biggest bedroom I've ever had it's the smallest bed I've ever had probably makes the bedroom look bigger um but really it's not that bad I mean that particularly where I am there's a gym that's like really nice they have pool table ping pong table a ton of events I mean every single week every single Wednesday actually so tonight they have free food at 9 p.m you can go and get a bunch of fruit and stuff and people bring you know people wearing uh Tupperware for lunch the next day and uh just a ton of events movie nights things like that um really nice people laundry everything's right there so it's convenient it's a little more expensive than I'm used to again I'm from Arizona so very very big different uh living conditions but but I definitely don't regret the decision I think living on campus was was the move to make so yeah I live in Ashton um which is also a graduate dorm right next to Sydney Pacific um very similar but I'll say if you want to live on campus you can really tailor it for what you want so I live in a three bedroom um all female room so we there's three single bedrooms and we share a bathroom um some people have their own room complete to themselves their own bathroom their own kitchen some people have two some people have four I think it even goes up to like some rooms have four but then you have a shared bathroom with your whole floor if you're really like to share with people um so it's really specific based on what your budget is and what what you your expectation of living is I guess um so there's a lot of different options to live on campus what else do you have inside oh yeah we have a bar in Ashton which is really nice and they have a cafe in Sydney Pacific and there's like trivia night karaoke night it's a very um community oriented I think just to give you an idea of I'm not sure what the blended statistics are but I think for the residential students there's 44 of us and I think roughly 85 to 90 of people live on campus so it's a popular as Trevor alluded because of the expense of Boston sometimes living close to campus but not on campus can be very costly and MIT um as you probably heard offers some really flexible options and affordable options so yeah um so next question um this is more of an academic based question um someone just based in general how important would you say the the supply chain analytics online course was in preparation um I know you've all actually taken it to some level so I'm the wrong person to ask um how important was it um it's actually really important I think uh the the concepts that are discussed there are really foundational for a lot of other classes that I've taken so um as you come here and as you're successful here you'll learn about all the great initiatives that are actually taking place in the Center for Transportation and Logistics uh for one of my classes this semester that's going on right now I'm taking a class uh called Urban Last-Mile Logistics with uh Dr. Matias Winkenbach he's a very very smart man uh but that is the first four classes of this series has been heavily focused on optimization algorithms and uh figuring out the most efficient way to get things to customers in the last mile and without uh the analytics course up front it would just be staring at a bunch of Greek letters that I had no idea what they meant so for me it was uh extremely helpful because it's allowed me to have that foundational understanding and move on to topics that I'm really interested in and really want to learn more about so again I've only been here a couple weeks but one of the classes I have right now is supply chain planning and it's very case study based um so they'll send out the content like oh here's your reminder of you know inventory planning strategies or something like that and you have your reading you study the case and you come into class and you talk about it the whole time so because professors are able to jump right in and have that assumption that you have had the analytics exposure and you at least know maybe you're not good at it yet but you at least know the the strategy behind it really makes the courses here on campus be able to get into a more um applicable and actually real life scenarios so all the case studies we have are real companies real data real problems and you're like okay that analytics class I maybe struggled through here's how it applies and here's how it's relevant and it kind of makes it come full circle so it's really important you don't necessarily have to be excellent at it um but definitely making sure you understand how it can apply to real life situations when you come on campus it'll make a lot more sense yeah I'm definitely not the analytics person um I'm a people person if you take a personality test I'm a woo which means I just love people um and so one of my least favorite classes in undergrad was statistics and this was a very statistics focused course and it again reinforced that I'm not an analytics guy but also um I learned a lot from it um like I'd probably forgotten everything I learned from undergrad and this was a lot more intense um we had to take it while we were working so I guess we all did that um similar way it was very difficult um we were also taking a python course at the same time so it was all kind of coming together but very important um sort of what you guys alluded to all of the topics we covered were reiterated in like our logistic systems class I'm sitting in on supply chain planning right now it's this exact same thing um so again very applicable very helpful especially when it comes to interviews a lot of people you know a lot of people are interviewing right after taking that course and that was very helpful and them sort of impressing the interviewers with with the knowledge they had about analytics so they've all talked about the content how important it is and I believe the course is important but I also think the course helps set a precedence for learning at MIT for us that are transitioning back into academia that course was kind of your first real breadth of what MIT was going to offer um and that learning experience is kind of similar to some of the courses we ended up taking the falls for residential is you have an online portion that you that that contents available for you at your disposal but the expectation is that you come to class and you already understand it because like Colleen mentioned classes are more for in-depth conversations real world applications advancing that learning and knowledge that you can get on your own so I think SC0 actually the analytics course kind of helped me transition back into how does MIT teach and get content across because it's different than what I did in undergrad and then it also kind of set the precedence for what my expectations were in terms of difficulty level and stuff that you're going to see coming your way for the next 10 five or 10 months depending on how long you're here great so I'm going to package a few of these questions together focusing more on the application side you guys can feel free to chime in but I'll just give my point of view so one question is what key factors does MIT consider when reviewing applicants one question was how important is the supply chain analytics in order to apply and another is what financial aid we offer so as we mentioned actually supply chain analytics is is an important component for the blended students it's required and it's one of the the foundational courses that we consider when reviewing on the admissions committee for the residential program it's an option to wave out of the GMAT or GRE we feel that it's a good indicator of your your abilities your statistics your math abilities so that's why we've elevated it to the level of waving out of the GRE or GMAT regardless for residential students even if you do continue with the GRE or GMAT you would still have to take SC0X in order to enroll so it is a although it is a big time investment it is worth your worthwhile in the end and it is a large factor in the application process in terms of financial aid and support since we're a master's program we have limited financial support available but we do have very specific avenues as Trevor and Tony mentioned we have the supply chain excellence award for and Brett we have the supply chain excellence award through various schools but for the general population of applicants coming we do have a pool of funding available both for students in need for merit based and also we have our our our hallmark award for diversity reaching out to women in supply chain on which we give out each year a full scholarship or full fellowship from MIT in January so there are definitely opportunities for everybody when you apply you would be automatically be considered for financial support and then finally the question about what are the key aspects of that we look for when you are applying for the blended program your performance on the micro masters is one of the most critical pieces that we evaluate for both programs it is also a holistic view of both your letters of recommendation your video statement plays an important part in sort of selling why you want to go to the program maybe those trigger some memories of yep and the other components that we have like I said your letters of recommendation your test scores are particular importance and then your transcripts from your undergrad we want to make sure that MIT is a good fit for you because it is a very rigorous process as the students have all alluded to here so we want to make sure that you have the strong base to begin the program here so that's a big component as well any thoughts from the panel I don't know if this is if you do this intentionally or if it just happens by accident but it seems that there's a really diverse group of work from a work experience perspective so it's not all industrial engineers and it's not all undergraduate supply chain majors I mean there's all sorts of education backgrounds and also work history backgrounds and I don't know if that's by design or by accident yes and that one I forgot to mention that even one of the top three pieces of information that the admissions committee takes into consideration is your CV your resume and your work history as Brett mentioned we have applicants from a wide variety both in terms of work experience supply chain experience but also branching out far beyond we always comment that we've had we've had students with varying degrees as well it's not everybody coming in with either business or engineering we've had a few philosophy majors in the past fine arts so it really is really is a diverse group that everybody can find sort of an avenue in supply chain yeah so looking at the questions here and as we get closer to the end one more question that came in back on the student life part is in terms of finances living in Boston we know it's expensive do you have any recommendations on basically how how you saved or what you do now to sort of keep keep things under control and thoughts if you get involved there's lots of free food so we have a lot of even you know within our program there's a lot of speakers a lot of companies that will come talk to us and they'll be lunch sometimes or those um sponsors a program that will come in um you can go to other programs networking events and they also have food you can go to your graduate dorms your friends graduate dorms events and they have food you get involved in activities and they have food so food's probably the most successful thing other than housing but there's lots of free food if you want to kind of chop a little bit off your budget there yeah it's a great question to be thinking about before you come here because you are a student again so having that mindset definitely helps you get in the right um frame of mind but for I mean I live in Boston so the on-campus stuff that happens in the evenings I don't typically get to take advantage of but your MIT student ID sure does get you a lot of free things in the city um I mean museums and tours and markets and the tea and I mean there's there's it's either discounted or it's free because you are a student so the city of Boston is very uh student heavy in terms like 60 plus universities or colleges in the in the greater Boston area so that's very affluent in terms of of college students in that mindset I got to save as much money as possible so you'll fit right in in that um but in terms of saving now I think it's really one it's I mean it's based on what you want after the program and what you want while you're here um because there's abundance of opportunities to travel and do stuff while you're out on the east coast as well so it's it really depends on where you're off financially and what you want to get out of the um your time here in Boston but for for me in particular I know that leaving here is new opportunity in terms of work but also I want to get into house get in by buying a house so it's a big um a big one for us to save him enough money to do that because that was something that we set out to do when we got here so I think it just depends on what your goals are after you leave the program and what you want to do while you're here but there is an abundance of free in Boston I was just gonna for me it's uh so prior to coming here we cut all the things that we didn't absolutely need like cable and things like that and now it's really easy because my wife just doesn't let me spend money so that's how we do it so I take a very different perspective from everybody else um I'm gonna make a lot more money after this than I made coming in um I I did save a lot of money um over the first three years but there's only so much you can save so I came in with the perspective that I want to enjoy my time here um I want to meet as many people as possible and a lot of times for me and my personality that means going to dinner is going to do things um I take advantage of all the free food while I'm here but I went out every single day in January um because we had students we had students from all the scale centers here there were over 200 people here and in order to get to know everybody and really introduce them to the MIT lifestyle and everything I spent a lot of money um and that's okay with me because you know I understand hey I invested this much up front the return on investment is going to be way higher so um it's it's up to you so if you want it you don't necessarily have to spend money as much as I did even if you do go out and do stuff a lot um I just have taken on the perspective of this is a cost I'm willing to take on and uh I'm going to make it up in the future so it's been worth it uh one more question from the um from the chat was um what role does Greek life play for master's students I feel like it's very heavily influenced in the for undergrads um at MIT but for graduate students it's not it doesn't play a huge part as far as I know we did play against all of them in intramurals so in the intramural football that that was our interaction with the Greek life they don't stand a chance um so one last question here that I think I'll close out with is um if somebody takes the micro masters online program can they still apply to the residential program um the answer is actually yes um you can apply to both programs um and we have applicants consider both programs as an option um yeah and we have several here who have done both any of the micro masters courses will um set you up um to succeed in our program here in either the blended or residential um oh I know yes just saying yeah so if you do take the micro masters and you get into the residential program uh it's really advantageous because if you get the permission of your instructor based off the the grade that you got in the course you might be able to actually waive that class and then um participate in something else so I think it's something that we've all alluded to but I don't think any of us have actually like outright said it um my one of my favorite things about MIT is that um even though you're in the supply chain management program here you're in the you're in MIT which means that you have all of MIT open to your um open to you you can if you're really interested in a class in aerophysics or something like that then you can take a class in that I mean you probably have to convince Robert why it's applicable to what you're trying to do but uh for me I've uh taken a quite a few business courses uh from the Sloan School of Business that have been very very beneficial so um if you're able to complete your micro masters and get into the residential program it just opens you up to those opportunities to take more things that you're interested in yeah and I'll just allude to one more thing outside of supply chain since you kind of hit on it a little bit uh I'm pursuing a healthcare certificate that's through Sloan so that's actually something that uh I have I'm passionate about the healthcare industry I didn't I have I have no work experience in it but this is an opportunity for me if everyone to make that career pivot um so I would say that a good majority of the courses that I take that have to count for double or I'm duplicating some of my work um is in the healthcare space but it's through Sloan so as Brett alluded to there's courses amongst all the different programs that are offered here that you get to take advantage of and and Robert's usually pretty nice about having those conversations with you now whether or not it gets approved is a different story but um yeah there's an abundance of stuff here to do and that's just one example there's also sustainability certificate you can get through uh through CTL and SCM so and the analytics certificate as well so if you have passions for things there's actually programs that you can get yourself into that kind of help frame some of the courses you can take because picking is kind of hard sometimes um but that's one more thing over there yeah I mean even as a staff member I've gone to lectures on the tests exoplanet hunting telescope very enlightening yes uh yeah uh so and I think with that we'll wrap up the webinar unless anybody has any last comments um I just want to say that uh one thing we haven't really talked to as much as all of the great outside speakers that come about a wide a wide variety of topics we had the Nobel Prize winners um of what mathematics of econ here last year and they spoke and I've gone to probably 20 different ones the Netflix founder was here and he was one of the best presenters I've ever seen and they're almost always free sometimes you get free books um but they're awesome um so that's something that you really don't get a lot of other universities and you only see in the movies so if you do come here if you do come here you can take advantage of that and it's yeah exactly your life is a movie if you come here so excellent so a lot of great selling points to apply um as a reminder our next application deadline for the residential program is March 1st uh May 1st for the blended program if you have any questions email scm at mit.edu and I'll be happy to respond um and thanks again to our panel oh and the blog the student blog as well we're having new content published every week so check it out um and our new website just launched this morning so take a look excellent thanks so much bye