MBA Quant Experience

Blogging has been slow while I've been getting admitted students ready for their summer pre-MBA quantitative preparations.  Cornell (Johnson), Dartmouth (Tuck), and Washington St. Louis (Olin) have purchased MBA Math subscriptions for all incoming students.  Georgetown (McDonough) will do so in the next day or so. 

Separately, admitted students from dozens of MBA programs have found their way to MBA Math on their own in recent weeks and are working through the twenty-two lessons covering Excel spreadsheets, finance, accounting, microeconomics, and statistics.  Students subscribing in the past six weeks will be attending the following prominent MBA programs in the fall: Boston College, Carnegie Mellon, Chicago, Columbia, Duke, Georgia Tech, Harvard, INSEAD, London Business School, MIT, Michigan, Purdue, Rice, Rochester, USC, Stanford, UT Austin, Wake Forest, William and Mary, and Yale.

Discussion boards and regular office hour online chats provide communication between students and me and among students.

Here is a testimonial from Stefano Pardi, a second-year student at London Business School and member of the MBA Math Board of Advisors, about his pre-MBA use of the MBA Math online quantitative preparation course:

After graduating in economics and business administration from L.U.I.S.S. University in Rome, I spent more than five years working for Andersen Business Consulting and Deloitte Consulting and one year and a half in industry as a corporate controller.

I am now studying for my MBA at London Business School, focusing on Strategy and Finance. A year ago, once I learned that I had been accepted by LBS, I started considering the subjects that I would like to review before the start of the program. Looking at my first year curriculum I soon realized that quantitative skills were the basis of the entire first year. So I decided to focus my effort in that area, and, even though I have always been familiar with math, both from an academic and professional perspective, I wanted to be sure that I was up to date with the skills required by the program.

I found MBA Math ideal for my goals because it:

• Allowed me to tailor my study in terms of schedule and format--training through quizzes, quick review of formulas, lessons
• Covered all the main areas I wanted to review before the start of the program--statistics, finance, spreadsheet modeling

As a result I felt extremely comfortable when tackling my first statistics, finance, and accounting assignments during my first term.

I received the following response from a second year at London Business School:

1. Does your program suggest brushing up calculus skills before starting the first year?

I don't remember any specific suggestion on this. I know the program incorporated accounting and statistics as core courses rather than pre-term teaching 2 years ago.

2. Does your program provide any calculus pre-term teaching?  If yes, is it done on campus?

Not that I know of.

3. Have you used calculus in your MBA studies?  If yes, in what classes?

I have seen references on calculus in many quant subjects (Finance/Operations/Marketing etc.) but I never had to use it. It was more of a reference on how to arrive to a certain formula. I am not sure if this depends on my focus (more marketing and strategy in the second year).

4. If yes to some of the above, would you recommend that prospective students interested in your program brush up on calculus before starting or just refresh their memories on the fly during their coursework?  If you suggest advance prep, would you give it low, medium, or high priority relative to other pre-MBA preparation needs (e.g., spreadsheets, accounting, finance basics).

I think that a brush up can be useful, but with a lower priority than spreadsheets, accounting and finance basics.