MBA Quant Experience

David Landers, who recently completed his MBA at Indiana's Kelley School, reports:

At Kelley, the guiding rule is that laptops should remain off during class unless working in Excel. With that said, most of the professors are flexible and have no problems with laptop use as long as they are being used for class materials or taking notes. It's clear from day 1 what each respective professor's policy is and that policy is often determined by the type of material / cases covered.

A blank Excel sheet is usually allowed for exams. Some professors have open book test, however it should be noted that the time available for most seven week course exams is 1.5 hours. Students can use financial calculators if they choose to, but none of the classes that I took spend any time discussing their functions and certainly did not require them.

Peter Park, a second year student at HBS comments:

For class: HBS classes are laptop-down, including finance classes. You can use calculators during the class to follow along with the discussion.  For the most part, there is no need for a financial calculator; a regular calculator will probably be enough.  I had a financial calculator, but never used it for functions beyond mult/division during class.

For exams: All HBS exams are case-based, usually with a 4-5 hour time limit, and grades are based on a written response/analysis of the case.  For FIN 1 & 2 exams, you're required to attach exhibits to support your analysis from an excel model you build during the exam.  Everything's open book and open note w/exception of online sources, and you can use calculators and Excel.  Since the response requires a lot of excel, I never used a calculator.  I'd say the same for most of my classmates. 

Jelka Dasent, a first year student at UT Austin's McCombs School, comments:

At McCombs, we do not use Excel in exams, and for Finance we are expected to be able to know how to use the financial calculator to find TVM [Time Value of Money]. The Finance Lectures give you a handout of the functions they want you to be able to use. All Finance exams are closed book, closed notes and no computers.

Jessica Grote, a first year student at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, reports on Excel at Olin:

Excel is essential for several classes at Olin.  Fortunately, Olin offers an excel overview during the 2-week "Gateway Olin" orientation program.  This is a great way for Excel beginners to learn the basics or for Excel whizzes to do some fine-tuning before the core program begins.  Once classes begin, it is easy to further Excel skills through the help of teammates during group projects.  In addition, professors often provide detailed Excel directions and are more than happy to walk through the steps with students who seek one-on-one support.

Anne Thompson, a first year student at Dartmouth's Tuck School, reports:

At Tuck the policy is "whatever  makes life easier in the real business world is what you should learn how to use in school."  This means that most of us use excel and there are no classes that require the use of a financial calculator, however, for the students who already use financial calculators they are free to continue to do so.  As for exams, most are open notes and laptops/calculators available for exams -- the one exception to this is Capital Markets class, which requires all exams to be taken without any notes. 

Chantrelle Nielsen, a second year student at MIT Sloan, reports:

At MIT we don't have Excel or laptops available for exams, but we generally can bring formula sheets, and standard calculators are sufficient for exams in Finance I and II.  There may be a few more advanced finance classes where they are helpful, but I doubt it.

Kate Canale, a first year student at Virginia's Darden School reports:

Same at Darden, everything is take home, open book, open notes etc.  I have never used a financial calculator here since Excel does everything for you, but I know some people that prefer to use calculators. 

 

Regarding Excel and calculators in Duke's EMBA program, Rick Bollar reports:

In the Duke Global Executive program, all of our exams are open book and we can use class materials, notes, textbooks and computers (and of course Excel) to complete them.  On the flipside, the exams typically take 8-16 hours to complete.

I think most of my peers do not use a financial calculator, but I find it's easier to use my HP than Excel for most TVM calculations and I use it to crosscheck my Excel calculations.

Responding to inquiries from prospective MBAs about quant skill tools and expectations at various programs concerning Excel, financial calculators, and calculus, I have posed the question to current MBA students serving on the MBA Math board of advisors. 

Of particular interest are exams.  Some schools limit laptop use (and thus Excel) during exams to limit the potential for internet-facilitated cheating.  It's a "trust but verify" approach to the honor code.

Responses will follow as separate posts.

I welcome responses from current students at other MBA programs.

Comments from a second-year at MIT Sloan:

We use tons of Excel here at Sloan, including regressions and other statistical functions.  People who don't have the skills are at a bit of a disadvantage, though there is so much group work that they are able to get lots of help.  There are some workshops offered during the first few weeks of classes, but I did not attend.  My skills are fine but even I have experienced the late-night frustration of knowing what you want to do and not knowing how... I'd be miserable if I hadn't had a lot of experience prior to school.

Comments from a second year at Harvard:

At HBS, we use Excel heavily in the first year – daily for a few hours per day. We use Excel heavily every day for our Finance courses (both 1^st and 2^nd semester), and moderately in the 2^nd semester for the Strategy, Macroecon, and Negotiations courses as well. First year did not include any use of regressions or stats programs, however.

Getting up to speed on Excel was the single biggest challenge I had at HBS. Formal excel prep through HBS for new students comes in three forms:

1) Analytics , which is a pre-MBA 2 week boot camp for select students (about 250/900 students enroll). Analytics provides some excel help through tutors, but not in a formal class, and as a result, I found that I knew a bit more about Excel after Analytics, but not nearly enough in terms of shortcuts, quickly thinking through how to best configure/set up spreadsheets. The time factor for Excel newbies like me killed me during the first year when there’s so little time to do all your cases, etc.

2) For all students: Finance, Accounting, and Quantitative Methods (QM) pre-Matriculation online modules : These were required for all students to complete after acceptance but before formal matriculation – failure to complete these modules would result in HBS retracting their offer letter. We had to use Excel on all these, but again, it didn’t show us how to use Excel, or use it effectively and efficiently. QM shows us how to use statistics, run regressions, and interpret the data, Finance, Accting self-explanatory.

3) For all students: Excel CD-ROM and workbook. The companion book with the online modules specific for Excel use. Somewhat helpful, but very basic, and not nearly enough, esp again in terms of setting up spreadsheets efficiently and knowing how to do the shortcuts in formatting, etc.

During HBS, students (usu PE or I-Bankers) would sometimes hold informal Excel tutorial sessions for their respective sections. We had a great, and very helpful section relative to others, so we had 2 shortcut help sessions and several sessions going through each case led by students. The 2 shortcut sessions were literally my lifesavers – it so dramatically helped my learning curve on how to use Excel that none of the other formal programs compared, and it was the first time I felt Excel was no longer a barrier to begin doing some “real learning”. We covered the following at these sessions:

1) General rules on formatting and setting up a spreadsheet:

a. Setting up hard coded inputs vs. formula dependent numbers with a color coding system (highlighted cells, blue/red text)

b. Setting up an assumptions box, etc.

2) How to create “if” statements, and then how to create switches (“yes”, “no” cell) to change scenarios

3) How to use goalseek

4) How to use the paint function to help format spreadsheets

5) Keyboard shortcuts to insert and delete rows, columns

6) Using F2, F4

7) Using ALT, T, U, A to check dependents

MBA programs differ in the Excel skills that students need and what mix of pre-enrollment, classroom, and student-to-student learning develops the required skills.  I will post responses from current students about their programs.

The MBA Math course provides an introductory Excel lesson coupled with coverage of Excel spreadsheet design and major functions (general purpose arithmetic implementation of formulas and also equivalent built-in functions) integrated into the finance, statistics, and economics lessons.