Keeping in touch with classmates after business school (in the real world!)

We’ve all heard it before. The value of an MBA is all about the network, right? We come to a place like Stanford GSB to surround ourselves with amazing classmates who will graduate and continue to be amazing. The going assumption is that we need to spend as much time as possible with people — getting coffee, going to TALK, traveling on the weekends.

But what if you are starting a company while in school? What if you have a family to take care of off campus? What if you are working part-time?

Or, what if, *gasp*, you are slightly introverted and don’t want to spend every waking minute surrounded by people?

Do these factors inform how satisfied you will be with your level of social engagement with your classmates after graduation? What about how to ensure you stay in touch with classmates after graduation?

As someone who will be in the minority group of GSBers moving away from the Bay area after graduation, I decided to reach out to alumni to see how these different factors affected their satisfaction in social engagement with former classmates.

First, some data on who responded:

● Number of responses: 140+

● Class years: 1966–2019, with fairly equal spread across decades

● Geography: 39% Bay Area, 46% other USA, 15% Non-USA

● Living Area: 52% Suburban, 39% Urban, 9% Rural

● SOs: During school 60% had SOs, and now 83% have SOs

● Gender Identity: 58% Male, 42% Female

After reviewing the data in detail, here are some interesting insights:

Insight #1: Regardless of where alums live, they are largely satisfied with their engagement with former classmates, with an average rank of ~7/10

• Digging in deeper, those living in the Bay Area are right at the average, ranking at 6.8/10. Lower scores included 5.9 for non-West Coast in the USA and 6.0 for European cities.

Insight #2: In terms of activities during the GSB that were key to developing the deepest relationships, alums pointed to casual social activities as the overwhelming favorite.

• The other two activities that were tied for second place were organized social activities on campus (e.g., FOAM, BPL, SGDs) and travel during the weekends and breaks. Club activities and interpersonal-focused classes like Touchy Feely were ranked lower.

Insight #3: Those that have the highest satisfaction with their current social engagement attended less than 1 organized social event per week, while the those with the lowest current satisfaction attended 5+ organized events per week.

• The activities you engage in while in school seem to have an effect on satisfaction with your engagement after school. Those that have the highest satisfaction attended few organized events, but the number of casual social events does not seem to matter.
• Those that attended 5+ organized social activities per week have lower current satisfaction, suggesting that one key to alumni satisfaction is getting used to setting up and attending casual social events.

Insight #4: Those with SOs during school and after school are slightly less satisfied with their social engagement with classmates, but it is close.

• This suggests that those with partners have more work ahead to balance time with their classmates and with partners.

You may be thinking to yourself, much like my PLC coachees did this quarter: “Andrew, thanks for doing all this work, but this feels like coaching, when all I want out of this article is some advice!”

One of the final questions I included was to capture unedited advice from alums. While I can’t list all 100+, here are the themes:

• It won’t happen passively. You’ll need to work for it and make it a priority but also recognize that it requires reciprocal effort.
• Where you live and where you work matters. Get close to the group in your city and join the alumni group in your area.
• Create habits and traditions. Call a GSB friend once a week, create an annual trip with your closest friends, etc.
• Contact people when traveling to their city to meet for dinner.
• Keep WhatsApp groups active, especially for international alumni.
• Make the extra effort to attend reunions.
• Recognize that you and others will change and evolve over time, especially when you hit major milestones — marriage, family, work transitions, life changes, etc. This will open opportunities for renewed relationships with classmates.