MBA Quant Experience

Another two weeks and another doubling of incoming MBA student quantitative skills preparation at mbamath.com since I last posted a similar chart.  Program kickoffs are fast approaching as July fades into August.  

Are your quantitative skills in finance, accounting, economics, statistics, and spreadsheets ready for the MBA first year core?  The clock is ticking.

Next week I'll be back in the classroom, teaching Quantitative Skills for the Core to a subset of incoming Johnson School students at Cornell.  Here's the latest mbamath.com activity chart for students of all programs:

The mid-week rush is in progress after the usual summer weekend dip.

The current issue of FastCompany has an article  by Chip and Dan Heath about Carol Dweck's mindset work, which I have highlighted in some posts (click Growth Mindset under Major Posts on the right).  They describe success through training about mindsets to improve math performance by junior high students:

Now the puzzle deepens: Dweck has begun to explore whether we can intervene and change people's mind-sets, and if so, will that make them more successful? Earlier this year, Dweck and two colleagues, Kali Trzesniewsi of Stanford and Lisa S. Blackwell of Columbia, ran an experiment on junior high schoolers. If they trained the students to have a growth mind-set, would the kids' math grades improve? In less than two hours over eight weeks, they taught the students concepts such as: Your brain is like a muscle that can be developed with exercise; just as a baby gets smarter as it learns, so can you; everything is hard before it gets easy--never give up because you don't master something immediately.

They then make the jump to bringing this training-for-mindset approach to corporate leadership.  That's got to be a double bonus for prospective MBAs.  Cultivating a growth-oriented mindset can help with your pre-MBA quant work and your post-MBA leadership skills!

Although it seems as if summer just started, the surge in student quant prep activity reminds me that MBA program kickoffs are on the horizon.

I'll be teaching a 3-day MBA Math course at Cornell's Johnson School in three weeks and a 5-day version at Dartmouth's Tuck School three weeks after that.

In between, I'll be doing a first-ever 3-hour MBA Math finance workshop on August 17 as the kickoff to MBADiversity's third annual symposium in Philadelphia.  The Wharton School has graciously provided a classroom for the workshop's expected 135 prospective MBAs.  You can learn more about the symposium at the MBADiversity site.

incoming MBA student quantitative skills preparation at mbamath.com has doubled since I posted a similar chart two weeks ago.  Here's the latest:

Note that the chart drops at the end because I am posting this in the morning.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recommends MBA Math as a quantitative skills preparation resource on its website.  I welcome feedback on Illinois students' experience with the material.

Chicago GSB's June newsletter to incoming students recommends MBA Math as a quantitative skills preparation resource.  I welcome feedback on Chicago students' experience with the material.