MBA Quant Experience

Here is a testimonial from Jessica Grote, who recently completed her first year at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis and is a member of the MBA Math Board of Advisors, about her pre-MBA use of the MBA Math online quantitative preparation course:

I am a second year MBA student at Washington University’s Olin Business School. I graduated with a degree in Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where I served as President of the Women in Architecture organization and studied abroad in Rome, Italy. Before returning to graduate school, I worked at an engineering firm and was highly involved in my community as a volunteer for the American Red Cross and United Way. Now at Olin, I am concentrating in Brand Management and Marketing Consulting/Strategy while serving as President of the Olin Marketing Association.

As an MBA student with a non-business background, I found MBA Math to be particularly helpful. The lessons gave me a comprehensive overview of the quantitative work that would be performed during the core curriculum of the program. MBA Math is unique in that it provides the flexibility to work at one’s own pace to meet personal objectives. It’s a great transition to graduate school.

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.

Here is a testimonial from Anne Thompson, a first-year student at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and member of the MBA Math Board of Advisors, about her pre-MBA use of the MBA Math online quantitative preparation course:

As someone who hadn’t solved a math problem since high school I owe my admission to the Tuck Class of 2009 to MBA Math. During the admission process I relied on MBA Math as an additional indicator of my quantitative abilities. In preparing for the first year core curriculum at Tuck, going through MBA Math again provided me with the confidence and the necessary tools to stay up-to-speed with my classmates.

Professionally I have spent the past six years as a non-profit fundraiser – first for a small arts-based non-profit in New York City, and then on a larger scale as a major gift officer for Yale University, my own alma mater. In my job I relied on Excel more as a recording tool than as a partner in solving complex calculations and valuations. The MBA Math program helped ease me into the “language of business school” and allowed me to see the value in developing basic proficiency in key areas. This is not to say that the Tuck core curriculum was made easy after taking MBA Math, but rather it was made manageable and I had a familiarly with the material that allowed me to come up the learning curve faster during the term. MBA Math, and Professor Regan in particular have my full endorsement!

Here is a testimonial from Michael Converse, a first-year student at Anderson School of Business at University of California at Los Angeles and member of the MBA Math Board of Advisors, about his pre-MBA use of the MBA Math online quantitative preparation course:

I have spent the last 8 years, after graduating from Harvard University, working in feature film production and development for Sony Pictures Entertainment and Universal Studios. Most recently, I completed an internship at Comerica Bank. Through my career in the entertainment industry, I gained experience solving unique business problems in a high pressure environment, through relationship building, content development, project management, financial analysis, and creative problem solving.

MBA Math was essential in preparing me for business school. After I passed out of the statistics requirement at Harvard University as an undergraduate I spent my time focused largely on humanities-based liberal arts courses. Additionally, I had been out of the academic world for close to 8 years before I decided to seek a graduate degree in business at UCLA Anderson. Needless to say it had been a long time between quantitative courses for me. MBA Math gave me a structured, go-at-your-own-pace outlet for me to prepare for the first semester of business school. The early preparation not only allowed me to avoid getting lost but also enabled me to understand and enjoy more of what was being taught. I, with my classmates, found the first semester at UCLA Anderson to be intensely academically rigorous and demanding. I know that being able to prepare for it in the spare time leading up to the fall allowed me to excel AND to enjoy the amazing experience.

Here is a testimonial from Joshua Izzard, a first-year student at Chicago Graduate School of Business and member of the MBA Math Board of Advisors, about his pre-MBA use of the MBA Math online quantitative preparation course:

I am a first year full-time MBA student at Chicago GSB. I hold undergraduate- and graduate-level degrees from the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory, which I completed as a concert pianist--so it is true that people from all professions do go to top MBA programs.

In addition to my extensive performing career, I have many years of experience in entrepreneurship, finance (most recently as an equities trader) and direct investment in Russia, where I spent nine years after leaving my native United States. While my education up to MBA level had been entirely musical, I had considerable exposure to quantitative material at work and was thus not too unprepared for the rigors of an MBA.

As I had thought of going into investment banking after business school, I thought that Chicago GSB would be an excellent school to go to based on both its reputation in finance and on its placement rates. I have been consistently surprised by the quantitative rigor of courses at GSB, and have needed Excel in all of my classes thus far. Calculus has proven necessary in exactly half of my courses, statistics in all courses (in some form or another). I plan to expand on these comments on the MBA Quant blog.

My experience during the first two quarters at Chicago GSB has been immeasurably enhanced by the fact that I spent the time necessary to go through all of the sections and problems on MBA Math. In fact, I continue to use it as a reference or reminder of certain things even though we have gone into greater depth long since. I cannot recommend this course enough.

Here is a testimonial from Jelka Dasent, a first-year student at McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin and member of the MBA Math Board of Advisors, about her pre-MBA use of the MBA Math online quantitative preparation course:

After college, I joined Price Waterhouse where I worked as an intern and pursued my chartered accountancy exams, graduating as a Chartered Accountant. I then went on to obtain 12 years of industry experience in the manufacturing and banking sectors, where I gained solid analytical and problem solving skills. I have been responsible for identifying and resolving financial reporting issues, as well as generating innovative methods to improve processes. Finally, before coming back to graduate school, I took on a team leadership role, in the restructuring and sale of the credit card and retail segments of the bank in which I was employed.

I am now in my second semester, as a first year MBA student, at The McCombs School of Business at University of Texas at Austin. The MBA Math internet tool was instrumental to my smooth transition to graduate school. After completing the first semester and doing very well, I was pleased with the time that I invested working through the respective mbamath modules. This internet tool allowed me to learn essential elements of the core that I was unfamiliar with and to revise topics that I had previous exposure to, all at my own pace.

After completing the first and debatably the most challenging semester, I would strongly recommend that all incoming MBA candidates use this tool both before school starts and certainly during the first year, as needed. I guarantee that students who use this user-friendly learning tool will be at a definite advantage if the essential quantitative skills are well known.

Sarah Baranowsky writes in her BusinessWeek MBA Journal  about the inevitable challenges of the MBA first term at Wisconsin Madison:

But before the halfway point, when exams are piling up and every waking minute is devoted to the program, the doubts creep in. You think, why am I punishing myself this way? You think, how did I end up here? You think, being a student is a crazy way to live. You think, I might not make it.

If you are heading to business school in the fall, you should expect to hit a low point sometime in November. Plan for it, because it will happen no matter what you do ahead of time. For my part, I started to see combinations of panic and fatigue on the faces in my cohorts first. I felt like I was doing reasonably well. Then midterms hit, and I fell apart. I realized that I don't know how to take tests anymore, especially tests that have anything to do with math (my last math class was more than 15 years ago). The stress plays out in everyone differently, but everyone learns one common lesson: the value of grace under pressure.

The upcoming holiday break is the light at the end of the first-term tunnel.

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.

I returned to my MBA home base at Tuck to teach the 5-day Pre-Enrollment Program, affectionately known as math camp, to 55 incoming first years.  The coverage is similar to the online MBA Math course, with lessons in finance, accounting, economics, statistics, and spreadsheets.  In each of 4 or 5 sessions each day, I introduce some concepts and lead students through sample problems before students then work individually through similar problems.  Second year teaching assistants and I roam the room to assist with questions.  The "watch-a-few then do-a-few" approach highlights areas of confusion and boosts confidence incrementally as students eventually can generate correct answers.

The second year TAs Jason, Alasdair, and Lindsay did a fantastic job grounding the week in what first year students will really need most and also in keeping the summer in math camp with some fun had-to-be-there performances.

Away from the classroom, many students explored the campus and surrounding area, including some canoeing and kayaking on the Connecticut River just a few minutes' walk from Tuck.  International students were having an orientation course across the hall, an Outward Bound group was sailing in coastal Maine, and a Tuck Builds group was doing some construction projects in the Upper Valley area. 

They're all in the midst of Decision Science and Accounting right now with summer most definitely over.

I had a fantastic experience teaching a 3-day pre-orientation quantitative skills course for 89 incoming Johnson School first years.  Lots of getting-started energy as students returned to the classroom for the first time in years combined with some quant anxiety at the outset.  By the end of three days and 24 hours of class time, friendships were forming and rusty algebra skills were coming back.

We covered a mix of finance, accounting, marketing, economics, probability, and statistics.

The teaching environment in Sage Hall was first class, the weather was perfect late summer warmth allowing exploratory evening strolls around campus and through the gorges.  Yes, they are gorgeous!

I closed out the experience on Friday evening with a quick Ithaca Pale Ale in the basement of Ruloffs in the company of students.

On the way out of town on Saturday morning, I picked up some great bagels at Collegetown Bagels in downtown Ithaca and a mix of bread and coffee from the nearby Ithaca Bakery before heading north to the Adirondacks for some R&R.

Next up in the classroom, a 3-hour MBA Math Finance Workshop for prospective MBAs on Friday at Wharton in Philadelphia as part of the 2-day MBADiversity Symposium followed by a 5-day "math camp" next week for incoming Tuck first years in Hanover.

A student who just completed the first year at a top school responds to the growth mindset posts with the following comments that identify common ground by recognizing that everyone faces a transformative challenge to overcome during the intense MBA first year:

Hmmm, that's interesting. A more accurate (from my vantage point) statement is that most incoming students have anxiety about SOMETHING, which may or may not include quantitative considerations. For example, the international students had anxiety about writing/speaking/reading in their non-native tongue and being able to keep up with native speakers; the quant jocks had anxiety about having to present and speak in public; finance and accountant types were worried about excelling in leadership and integrative thinking courses.

Additionally, I think the level of anxiety across all of these types was roughly similar, underscoring the fact that it probably was not necessarily the subject they were worried about, more so than the dramatic change in their life circumstances.

Here is a testimonial from Edmund Aziabor, a second-year student at MIT's Sloan School of Management and member of the MBA Math Board of Advisors, about his pre-MBA use of the MBA Math online quantitative preparation course:

Prior to attending business school, I worked in the financial services industry for 6 plus years with Merrill Lynch.  In order to prepare adequately for the quantitative requirement of the MBA curriculum I came across the MBA Math online course and chose it over other expensive in-class preps which were not necessarily structured particularly for the MBA program.

The flexibility of the MBAMath.com tools and exercises allowed me to pace myself and served my needs in all the coverage areas that I needed to refine, having been out of school for some time.  I highly recommend this to all prospective MBAs.

Here is a testimonial from Rick Bollar, an incoming student in the executive MBA program at Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and member of the MBA Math Board of Advisors, about his pre-MBA use of the MBA Math online quantitative preparation course:

I am enrolled in an Executive MBA program and I have been out of an academic environment for well over twenty years. While I did well in Fuqua’s quantitative assessment, I left my interview feeling as if I had holes in my experience and I wanted to make sure I had prepared as well as possible for the first semester.

Fuqua offers a quantitative readiness program and while it is good, I felt it needed to be augmented with additional drills, training and feedback - it also needed to be a program that could be done in short sessions from anywhere.

That’s how I came across MBA Math. MBA Math allows me to study and practice when I can between work and family obligations and I find that most of my work is done in 30 to 60 minute sessions. It’s easy to pop in and practice with just a few minutes time. In fact, most of my study time has been while I travel, from various hotel rooms.

I matriculate in May and I look forward to reporting my progress in the first quantitative classes.