Finally a breather

So this week is going to be easier. No on campus interviews for me, although I will be traveling at the end of the week.

I went to NYC for an interview last week and decided to visit my old office. It's funny b/c after like 10 mins it felt like I never left. Even my visitor's pass still said employee on it. Those were a great group of people. Luckily the company I interviewed with (one of the top 3 consulting firms for those who are keeping track) has fabulous people. That company is my first choice. They remind me of Tuck in the fact that the people are brilliant but completely down to earth. It's like you want to go grab a beer with these people.

It was nice ot be back in a city again and get the feel for nyc. I still can't find good black pumps for interviews. what's up with that! I know exactly what I want. A pair of comfortable, black, leather, plain but classically styled with a mid-size heel and a more square toe. the kind of shoe that never goes out of style.

Ok for those of you reading this blog for MBA purposes, let me give you an overview of my core classes so far

Fall Term A&B

Analysis for General Managers - basically cases. The prep work isn't that hard. Read the case, read the required articles. read the case again and think critically. Really fun to have discussions in group

Accounting - No accounting background? Welcome to your first challenge. Accounting is hard. Especially if your prof wants to focus on the analysis of the numbers. Good for honing your analysis skills. Bad for feeling confident about your abilities. Your options to succeed are hope for a great professor (like I had) or get a tutor early on. Hopefully you will have a CPA in your group

Decision Science (or Excel Modeling for Dummies) - who knew Excel could do so much. Ok, if you were a real financial analyst or you worked in banking, then you knew. I had a real challenge in this class. The cool thing is even if you don't do well relative to your peers, even at other schools modeling is scondary so you will likely be the Excel guru in your job. Key take-away is when building models, start small. think broad before you touch excel. Then have fun running long simulations with Crystal Ball.

Leading Organizations - What should be my favorite class given what I want to do. Since it's a soft class most people tend to blow it off. Don't. Everybody who get's an MBA will at some point be managing people. If you have never managed people - it's a hard thing to do. This class is one of the most important.

Statistics - hard b/c it's easy to understand the concepts. harder to remember when and exactly how to apply them. one of those classes where it's easy to make a mistake. keep up b/c the concepts from one class build onto the other

Capital markets - the best class to teach you what to do with your money. I thought I understood stocks before, but now I really understand stocks and the markets. The broader concepts are easy, but the specifics are harder

Economics - the microversion still isn't as sexy as the macro version. a lot of price and demand. Depending on your school you may actually use calculus to understand your demand curves and marginal revenues and costs. Just remember that max profit is when MR=MC

Managerial Communications - essentially how to write and present. Although people made fun of this class it is absolutely necessary. It's one of those classes that alums tell us the value of it. I can definitely see the value when we get executives who have black on white slides that serve no purpose.


One of the thing that sucks about b-school is actually having to go to class. Some classes sessions are useless. The class themselves are interesting, such as marketing, but having to wake up and go to class is pretty much useless. at least one good part is that it gets you up and out of bed.