MBA Quant Experience

Georgetown's McDonough School of Business purchased MBA Math subscriptions for all incoming students in the full-time, evening, and executive MBA programs. This is the fifth year for the full-time and evening programs, the fourth year for the international executive program, and the third year for the Georgetown-ESADE executive program.

Georgetown's McDonough School of Business purchased MBA Math subscriptions for all incoming students in the full-time, evening, and executive MBA programs. This is the fourth year for the full-time and evening programs, the third year for the international executive program, and the second year for the Georgetown-ESADE executive program.

Georgetown's McDonough School of Business purchased MBA Math subscriptions for all incoming students in the full-time, evening, and executive MBA programs. This is the third year for the full-time and evening programs, the second year for the international executive program, and the first year for the Georgetown-ESADE executive program.

McDonough School of Business purchased MBA Math subscriptions for all incoming students in the full-time, evening, and executive MBA programs. This is the second year for the full-time and evening programs and the first year for the executive program.

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 Lenika Dorman, a first-year student at McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University and member of the MBA Math Board of Advisors, about her pre-MBA use of the MBA Math online quantitative preparation course:

I am a first year MBA student at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. I graduated from the University of California, San Diego in 2000 with a degree in Political Science with an emphasis in Pan American Studies. Upon graduating from the University of California at San Diego, my passion to enhance my global perspective motivated me to teach English in Prague, Barcelona and Madrid.

After over a year of working abroad, I was given the opportunity to join American International Group (AIG) as a Business Development Manager in Boston. With a strong desire to pursue a career in the marketing field, I left Spain to embark on a successful, 5 year career with AIG.

My marketing roles at AIG required sharp analytical skills. My responsibilities included; analyzing consumer purchasing trends and distribution models as well as conducing risk and financial analysis. While I had gained a great deal of quantitative experience throughout my professional career, I lacked the formal, quantitative training that was needed to succeed in a top MBA program.

MBA Math gave me a broad overview of the quantitative skills I would need to feel confident in the MBA environment. The program allowed me learn at my own pace and focus on the areas in which I had the most difficulty. The tutorials were very clear and the content was very applicable to my first year courses. MBA Math was an extremely efficient way for me to prepare for my first year of business school.

I received the following response from a first year at Georgetown's McDonough School:

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

Georgetown does not emphasize a need to brush up on calculus. In fact, it used to be a prerequisite but in the last couple of years they have discontinued that requirement.

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

The campus provides Statistics, Accounting and Excel but no Calculus pre-term courses.

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

I have never taken a calculus class and I have been doing OK in my classes. I remember a few times that my stats, econ and finance professors would say, “this is basic calculus that everyone should know” but I would just learn whatever calculus functions were necessary for that particular aspect of class.

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 wish I had taken a calculus class prior to coming to school as it would have given me more confidence throughout my course work. I do agree with one of the other responses that algebra is a higher priority than calculus.

Rachael Klein writes in her BusinessWeek MBA Journal about her first term at McDonough School of Business at Georgetown.  She makes an interesting point about the wide range of student backgrounds and the experience level to which professors pitch their teaching:

Our class has about 240 people divided into four cohorts. We all have the same core classes in our first two modules—each module is six weeks long, goes by in what feels like two weeks, and by the end, the beginning feels like a year ago. Business school flies by at lightning speed, but the beginning feels as far away as high school.

Fortunately for the smart people, the professors teach to the top of the class and then make themselves readily available outside of class for the students who are seeing z-scores and time value of money for the first time (gently termed "poets" by a favorite economy professor). Since we all have the same classes, we help each other. Touchy-feely perhaps, but trust me, it returns full circle.

There is no way to make everyone happy in first year classes.  Each prof makes a choice, balancing the desire to challenge the more advanced students while not abandoning the "poets".  As with other schools, students get through the workload by working together and sharing strengths:

But they also admitted to being pretty exhausted from their first year. And it's true. It's exhausting. The workload is ferocious. But the solidarity of the student body is what gets us through. The fact that everyone has the same work is a relief, and well, let's be honest, misery loves company.

...

The next thing we know, the four of us are sitting around in the school study area, nursing glass bottles, discussing game theory, and painlessly finishing the assignment. Only drawback, we have about five other assignments to tackle before bedtime. But still, the experience and the overly sentimental unity we feel during times like this can't be helped. It's a great feeling, and one none of us will forget.

But remember, you take your exams alone, and beerless!