MBA Quant Experience

Lucia Marquez writes about Wharton's pre-term program in this student diary blog entry:

During pre-term you can opt to take classes to refresh your memory in statistics, accounting and microeconomics. The refresher courses are aimed at those who have seen the material before and want to take a test to waive out of the core courses. If the material is new, you can take the introductory course to give you the fundamentals so you can hit the ground running once September rolls around. There is also the math test that everyone has to pass.

A few weeks later she writes about the accelerated pace of the first term:

It’s been only three weeks and we have mid-quarter exams already. The summer and pre-term really lulled me into believing that the pace would only be turned up a little more and that everything wouldn’t be as crazy as they made it sound when you came to visit during welcome weekend….No wonder I felt like I got hit by a truck during the first two weeks.

I was in complete survival mode. We got emails from professors the weekend before “real” school started, reminding us that we had homework posted on the internet that we needed to have done on the first day of class. I was doing only what needed to be turned in and reading the basics just in case I got called on in class.