Choosing Schools

So, when the monkey-man finally remembered to apply to schools for fall '08, he made a list of all the schools he would ideally like to apply to including;

Wharton, Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, Columbia, London, INSEAD, NYU, Chicago, UCLA

Obviously this was way too many schools given the short amount of time he had, so I asked him to put the schools in categories of "love to go" and "LOVE to go" while I made my own categories of "like to live" and "LOVE to live".

In the end his LOVE's were:  Harvard, Stanford, and London

My LOVE's:  London, NYU, Harvard

Obviously his choices were based on curriculum, quality of school, and fit whereas my choices were based on cities I have yet to live in.  Actually, I never wanted to live in Boston for Harvard, but I thought I would just be so proud to say my monkey was going to Harvard!

Unfortunately, my NYU got cut from the list as it just didn't seem to have a good fit for him and we decided on Harvard and London definitely.  I was a little put off by Stanford as we already live in California and I would really like to change states, but the community there for partner's seems pretty tight-knit, there are some jobs available in my field, and I liked their curriculum so much that I was almost tempted to apply!  After some discussion, we also added Wharton to the list since back when he started to think about MBA programs in '06 it was at the top of his list and being from an "inner-city" myself, I know better than to believe even half of the negative opinions of outsiders.

The order of his preference changes everyday and right now Harvard is actually at the bottom of the list and Wharton and Stanford are competing for the top spot of dream school.  

I guess the point of this post is that I really think that partners should voice their opinions on these choices from the beginning.  If you are planning to uproot your life for two years, become the only "bread-winner", and provide all the emotional support that is necessary for a progrm like this, you certainly get to have a say ;) 

**My monkey is at least a little anxious after all!  I mentioned it in passing that I have somehow gotten caught up in the obsession of the waiting game and he said, "yeah, I'm frustrated too."  Of course, that was all he said before moving on to something else.  Why can't I just get over it like that?!  The more I think about it the more I think this is just a way to escape the tons of work I have to do for a somewhat reasonable cause.  Ugh, I'm supposed to be spending the night writing a letter to get more funding for my project to provide nutrition education to low-income communities but here I am blogging about someone else's MBA experience!  Whatever, it's a great break!