Sunday, October 19, 2008

It's the one question I remember from my Johnson School admissions interview because it's the one question I didn't know how to answer. For me, it was like someone asking "are you nice?" or "are you a fan of Bob Dylan?"...and then pressing me to prove it. My answer was "yes," but I stumbled when I had to explain why I categorized myself as such.

Even though I highly doubt the question would be posed to an engineer, I imagine that if it was, she would just point to her undergraduate transcript, list several quant classes and put it to bed. In retrospect, I could've probably pointed to my transcript as well, emphasizing the fact that the great philosophers were masters of analytics and arguing that philosophy represents the more complex, natural extension of mathematics, engineering, and systems in general. It didn't occur to me at the time.

Now that I've officially finished one half of the core, I'd like to take another stab at the question:

The deepest, most versatile analytical ability comes not from the ability to work with numbers (although that can be important) but from the ability to problem solve. For that reason, the "ability to think" and the ability to solve problems is the very essence of the modern liberal arts education. So, my undergraduate education, which could be so easily dismissed as ancillary to business, is the very foundation that I continually rely on time and again, in the core, in business, and in life. It allows me to adapt, solve problems, and make decisions. Coupled with innate ability and professional experience, a liberal arts education is precisely what makes me analytical and allows me to solve tough problems, no matter how big the numbers are.