MBA Quant Experience

Johnson Graduate School of Management purchased MBA Math subscriptions for all incoming students in the two-year MBA Class of 2009 and accelerated MBA Class of 2008. Students are encouraged (admitted student web site) to achieve 90% proficiency with 21 of the 22 topics, with one topic (using calculus) considered optional.

On Thursday, March 8 at 10AM PT/1 PM ET/6 PM GMT, Maura Herson, Associate Director of MBA Student Affairs at MIT's Sloan School of Management will participate in an online chat devoted to the MIT Sloan quant experience.  Maura will be joined by Jeri Seidman, who teaches MIT Sloan's pre-term accounting course, and first-year MIT Sloan students Susan Hanemann Rogol and John Clingan.  Linda Abraham and I will moderate the chat.

I am collaborating with Linda Abraham, founder of Accepted.com, to organize and moderate what I hope will become a series of school-specific quant experience online chats.  The chat will be hosted at Accepted.com's chat site, which you can reach by clicking here.

The quant experience chats will focus on the quantitative experience of first-year students and what prospective students can do to prepare themselves.  Here are some questions to give a sense of the intended chat topics.  Of course, participants are encouraged to ask their own questions.

Maura, MIT is world famous as an engineering powerhouse.  Would it be wrong to think of MIT Sloan as an MBA program for engineers or for students aiming to manage technical businesses?  How would you characterize the quant demands of MIT Sloan relative to other top MBA programs?  Can a person with a non-quantitative background get admitted?  Can such a person thrive in the program?

Susan and John, would you please characterize the quant demands of the courses that you are taking right now?  How do you balance the demands of quantitative and qualitative courses?  Do you find yourselves "stealing" time from preparation for your qualitative courses to make sure you complete assignments for your quantitative courses?

Jeri, please describe the structure and goals of the pre-term accounting course that you teach.  Who takes it?

Maura, what expectations do you set with students about pre-term preparation and what learning resources do you recommend or provide over the summer or when students first arrive on campus?  Do you have any special programs for incoming students with weaker quantitative backgrounds?

John and Susan, can you give us an overview of the balance between individual and group work in your quant courses?  Can you give us some examples of how study groups help balance different individual student skill sets in your quant coursese?  How does a student with a relative weakness in a given course, who might rely heavily on other study group members, make sure that he or she learns enough to perform well on individual exams?

Jeri, although accounting obviously involves numbers, the math is simple.  The challenge is more logical than quantitative.  Do you find that students' ability to learn accounting lines up well with quantitative ability or do you see other factors determining proficiency.

Maura, what support resources (office hours, TA sessions, tutors) are available outside of class to help students with the quantitative demands of the first year curriculum?  How do students find the time to use these resources?

Susan and John, what are your student perspectives on support resources outside of class?

Maura, you oversee MBA students from their arrival through graduation.  What words of wisdom can you offer to prospective students to help them make informed decisions about appropriate preparation and to keep the quantitative demands of the first year in the proper perspective?

John and Susan, based on your experience so far, what quantitative preparation should prospective students make sure they do before arriving on campus and what can they leave to learn when they arrive?  What do you know now about the quant demands of the first year that you wish you knew before starting your first year?

What you don't see in the above list are questions about the logistics of the admissions process.  Linda hosts a series of excellent chats that cover these issues. 

Sally Jaeger, Assistant Dean and Director of the MBA Program at Tuck, made the following comments about first-year support options in a podcast over at MBA Podcaster about MBA Quantitative Skills:

We have tutoring available on demand. And we pay for tutoring, so cost is never going to be an issue with students. If somebody needs a tutor, we get them a tutor. And we make sure they get the help they need, but they have to come to me in order to get the tutoring. Once you do start school, keep in mind that you won’t have very much extra time. And with the free time you do have, you don’t want to be playing catch up. You’ll want to be focusing on forming relationships, joining clubs and organizations, and finding internships.