<p>Hi i have some questions about business at stanford--if someone who goes here could please answer i would be very delighted!</p>
<p>1) Where do people who are interested in business work? Especially people who are into engineering/techy business. Being in palo alto what companies/ industries do most people work?</p>
<p>2)Also how often do they work? Is it a throughout the year type thing?</p>
<p>3)Also i heard stanford is known for its entrepreneurship--is there a lot of undergrads working with each other to try to start up companies/ trying to invent some random things?</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>1) If you want to work during the year, there are many options. You could work at a nearby firm part-time (there are dozens of options in the area- from Fortune 500 to start ups), but that would be tough without a car or a non-commute job (like maybe programming). You could also work on campus, and there are tons of clubs for business/entrepreneurship people like yourself, not to mention non-affiliated things like start-ups (which, if you situate yourself with computer programmers, is a common thing to see). </p>
<p>2) Depends on what you want to do. Most people I know do not have a job off-campus during the school year. That gets really stressful I’m sure. </p>
<p>3) As I mentioned above, most definitely yes. There are these legit start-up/business plan competitions at Stanford, and if you are motivated enough you shouldn’t have a hard time finding a team for those. The major most associated with this culture is Computer Science, although a broader categorization would be that computer programmers (some major in symsys, others in EE, etc.) are generally the ones involved in these things. Not that an ME major can’t join in- it’s just that it seems like there are far less opportunities for an ME major to do so (his peers won’t be as into the “get-filthy-rich-by-thirty” attitude, and it just seems logistically easier to do a coding startup than, say, a mechanical device startup). </p>
<p>I’ll be honest one thing I don’t like about Stanford is this ubiquitious entrepreneurship spirit. I can’t tell you why, I’m trying to figure that out myself actually.</p>
<p>Hi thanks for your response!</p>
<p>It seems that people at Stanford don’t seek jobs as much as people in NYU or Columbia. Why is this? I don’t think commuting is a big problem (eg merill lynch is 1 mile away)?</p>
<p>Also, if you’ve visited other schools, how much more “entrepreneurial” do you feel stanford is compared to other ivy leagues and top schools? For example, what percentage of the population would you estimate has a “I have a great idea and want a start up” attitude?</p>
<p>About how many people show up to these “entrepreneur club” meetings during the school year?</p>
<p>nooblet, while you’re waiting for a reply from Senior0991, I’ll chime in with my impressions from campus visits. I would say the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well at many top schools, with the strongest presence at Stanford, Harvard, Wharton and, maybe a bit surprisingly, Dartmouth. When you look at these schools as a group, one common aspect among them is the presence of a world-class business school within the university. And of course, they all have extremely capable and motivated student bodies.</p>
<p>I’ll be curious to hear what Senior0991 finds uncomfortable about this. I can’t come up with anything negative about it myself, other than maybe that the more entrepreneurial kids may tend to be very future-focused, and not as devoted to the present moment or something? Or maybe that, as a group, they are more competitive? I personally think it’s a great thing and, as I said, very common at the top schools, though it may be more overt at some than others. Entrepreneurship is likely to lead to discoveries that enhance life for everyone in the 21st century, not just to the personal enrichment of the entrepreneurs.</p>
<p>nooblet:
-I honestly don’t know why more people at Columbia or NYU have like legit jobs and stuff (not just working at the library or something). It could just be the whole Manhattan culture surrounding them. A lot of them probably want to pay for better housing too.
-I haven’t spent enough time at other schools to know what the culture is like there, but I’d gotta think MIT would be up there too.<br>
-Well entrepreneurial clubs specifically (not business things like Stanford Consulting or SSE) it seems as if they are less organized than your typical club. In that a few of its members may meet occasionally and see if anyone has a new idea worth discussing. These clubs are really only starting now (there are few if any that are well established) with my reason being the appeal of coding for apps on smart-phones and iPads. But for a lot of the initial start-up work, there will generally only be a few people at most working on it. </p>
<p>Since I’m not really into this kinda stuff, I can’t give you the best answers. I know a guy that can, though, so PM me if you wanna get in touch. </p>
<p>zenkoan:
-For all I know it could be jealousy of their futures, although I’m pretty sure that’s not it. If there is one thing I’m jealous about it is that I get the impression that Stanford University is noticeably more catered to these types of people than, say, an aspiring teacher or artist. Over time, this bias lends itself toward the belief that these entrepreneurs, and what they are working on, is superior to the average Stanford student and his endeavors. That they are more beneficial to society in the long run. So it’s not really the people specifically, although they are not innocent, but the culture and institution taken as a whole.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply, Senior0991. I’m sure Stanford does celebrate the role its grads and faculty have played in making Silicon Valley what it is. Those entrepreneurial things, and other tech-y developments, automatically get lots of media attention. They’ve also been instrumental in Stanford’s meteoric rise over the past few decades, which has helped the school attract and retain great faculty in all disciplines, including the humanities. One aspect that suggests a good sense of balance to me is that Stanford weights its GERs heavily toward the humanities, beginning with IHUM and PWR. The faculty on the humanities side sure looks great to me as well. It also seemed to me during my many visits that there’s a pretty vibrant, diverse arts scene on campus. Have you noticed a lack of support for humanities-related activities, or is it more of an intangible thing?</p>
<p>Techies generally don’t mind having to take one humanities class but throw a lot of fuzzies in one halfway legit techy class and they’ll whine for ages. That’s an aside that may (but probably doesn’t) explain why the GERs are distributed in such a way. Also I think the distribution requirements represent a pretty good distribution, apart from IHUM and maybe language. IHUM is the most controversial of the requirements. One of my guesses as to why it started in 1996 is that the humanities professors were concerned that their craft wasn’t receiving as much attention from the undergraduates and the school. Although they will say that they just think it’s necessary that every student learn about human interactions and such (I’m interested in what they would say about a required biology sequence, as it seems pretty important to me to learn about things like evolution, anatomy, and ecology in terms of the new scientific age we live in). </p>
<p>Yes, the humanities faculty is very strong. Most of the programs seem to be doing well financially too. I wouldn’t say therefore that it’s a lack of support for them, but yeah it’s more of an intangible thing. It transcends individual students and individual programs.</p>
<p>Edit: I should emphasize that this isn’t really a techie vs. fuzzy thing. For me it’s far more of a entrepreneur vs. everybody else type of thing. Although the pre-professional business types can probably be thrown in with the entrepreneurs as well.</p>
<p>hey zenokan thanks for ur input,I have visited Dartmouth for a weekend, and I see that the nighttime culture does not foster an entrepreneurial spirit (the majority of students here are at frat parties, and most of them get drunk to the point where they cannot properly socialize). So I think that the prescence of a good grad biz school doesnt indicate an undergrad entrepreneur atmosphere</p>
<p>thanks senior: besides entrepreneur clubs, what other activities provide an “entrepreneur atmosphere”? For example, will people casually discuss random new tech ideas at eating clubs, ect? It seems like MIT has this type of culture</p>
<p>Hey nooblet. I didn’t say that the presence of a good b-school in itself guarantees an entrepreneurial presence among undergrads, just that the schools where I’ve observed lots of entrepreneurial spirit all did happen to have fine b-schools. Re: Dartmouth, I agree there’s a whole lotta drinking going on there, but I don’t think you can draw too many conclusions from a single weekend. There’s definitely a sizable entrepreneurial segment of the student body there, and they may not be among those who get hammered most weekends.</p>