Blog category: Ross School of Business
I’ve been here now for 2.5 (sorta) days, so time to catch everyone up on what’s gone down with some phat platitudes:
Flying to India takes a long time. The other three Peek India MAPpers and I counted things up and realized it took us 36 hours to go from door to door — Ann Arbor apartments to our Bangalore guest house. Before I left I had planned to do a diary of my extended time on three flights, but afterwards I’m glad I forgot, because after I got to my Chicago layover and had a nice chance to hang with The Wife for a few hours, this is pretty much the extent of it:
- First four hours from O’Hare to Frankfurt: Try and fail to sleep, then briefly succeed.
- Next two hours: continue reading Freedom at Midnight.
- Final 1.5 hours: Watch Bridge on the River Kwai; get mad when it’s interrupted by landing.
- First 5.5 hours of flight to Mumbai after 1.5 hours in Frankfurt: Finish Bridge; watch The Longest Day to continue random WWII movie marathon.
- Next 2.5 hours: Try and fail to sleep; land in Mumbai at 5 a.m. local time.
- Next 3 hours: Deal with Mumbai airport bureaucracy; get waved through security for no apparent reason while other teammates get scanned; eat samosas with ketchup for breakfast; board flight to Bangalore.
- 36 hours from start: Get to Bangalore house at noon local time; eat food in jet-lagged daze.
Traffic in India is something else. Nobody really respects lanes here and honking is constant, but somehow everyone seems to get to their destination. Crossing the street though is like playing Frogger with your life. Fun! My secret is finding some Indian person going where I want to go, then letting them play fullback-in-a-sari as I run for a TD to the other side of the street.
Still getting used to eating Indian food three times per day. I haven’t had the traveler’s curse, although I will euphemistically say that my system is a little confused.
The apartment is nice, but I look forward to getting out more. We’re still getting settled and starting our project work, so so far there hasn’t been much touring around. But I’ll have more interesting stuff to say soon, for real.
Though this will say posted at 11:20 p.m., in reality here it’s 9:50 a.m. 10.5 hours from EST — you’re ending your day while I’m starting mine.
Alright, keep it real until next time. Later.
While it’s not so dramatic in our modern, travel-friendly age, tomorrow marks my departure for India. On a personal level, it’s going to be strange to be leaving my classmates, my Ann Arbor experience, and most of all, my wife. Regardless, I’m still very excited for a once-in-a-lifetime rare opportunity to travel halfway around the world and live my life in India for a full five weeks.
It’s a crazy opportunistic time we live in, yo. Think back to what your grandparents could do in their day and age and it’s obvious: Take nothing for granted!
Keep reading the blog for updates — I promise to keep you all posted on the next five weeks via patrickstack.com. This blog isn’t as fun as the old one, but it’s still good for something!
If Robespierre were to ascend from hell and seek out today’s guillotine fodder, he might start with a list of those with three incriminating initials beside their names: MBA. The Masters of Business Administration, that swollen class of jargon-spewing, value-destroying financiers and consultants have done more than any other group of people to create the economic misery we find ourselves in.
Harvard’s Masters of the Apocalypse
There’s a lot of validity to this article, and perhaps the naturally occurring grad-school process of divorcing theory from reality is more harmful in the business world than in other disciplines. But I promise, I do not find it awesome to destroy value.
Though my motto is indeed “Mediocre But Arrogant”.
After 21 weeks and nine courses, my MBA class is finished with the Ross core curriculum first-year class set. These are the wide-ranging classes we all have to take before branching out in our second year into electives. There are a few slots for electives in the first year too, but most of the time is spent on dropping core bid-nass knowledge so we can all be well-rounded corporate leadaz of tomorrow.
So I’m turning tables up in this and giving each core class a grade, all using the non-lettered and happily-impossible-for-GPA-calculation Ross scoring system. (Excellent > Good > Pass > Low Pass > Fail). All you potential Ross School of Badass hustlaz can read up here for the info. This takes into account my background, which is that of a non-business dude, so people with financial or accounting experience probably had a much different set of opinions. I won’t be going into detail on the particular profs for each; I save that for my UMich course evaluations. I’ll also warn you that the particular makeup of your section will determine a lot of your class experience; fortunately, Section Six represents to the fullest.
And finally, if anyone stumbles on this and dislikes it, remember that grades don’t matter at Ross anyway. (A truly awesome fact during recruiting!)
FALL A
ACC 502: Principles of Financial Accounting
Grading the Course: Pass
I think this grade had a lot to do with my professor, who was a super cool and chilled out guy but used a Socratic teaching method that took a lot of adjustment before we really got things. There’s some room for debate in accounting, but this class is based around reading and creating balance sheets and income statements, so it could have used a little more how and a little less why.
BE 502: Applied Microeconomics
Grading the Course: Pass
Again, nice professor, but the course material is exactly the same as an undergraduate microeconomics course. I don’t know why this is a 500-level graduate class. Still, it was a useful refresher, and I sucked at undergraduate econ. (My grade in this may or may not have been much of an improvement.)
STRATEGY 502: Corporate Strategy
Grading the Course: Excellent
There were plenty of times I hated this course, like when the professor called on me two times in one class and twice rebuked me with, “So it’s exactly the opposite of what Patrick said.” But I give it an excellent because this is a good hard-assed course that makes you back up your opinions with solid business thinking. Both professors love to cold call and get in your face on your answer, often reacting dismissively, but that just makes it more of a challenge. So this one is good. It’s also good for identifying the gunners in your section, because they can’t resist the sound of their own voice.
OMS 502: Applied Business Statistics
Grading the Course: Good
A lot like the statistics class you took in undergrad, but extremely well-organized with two very likeable professors. Seriously, the handouts, quizzes and material were perfectly structured. The final, however, was a total brain-melter. We got sucker-punched by that one.
FALL B
FIN 502: Financial Management
Grading the Course: Excellent
This was a weird grade: while our prof for this class was pretty bad, the material was really interesting and useful. I think I may have gotten more out of this class than any of the others, and that was even with The Count. (Long story.) Good stuff for a non-numbers man like myself.
MKT 503: Marketing Management
Grading the Course: Good
Marketing seems like a gooey subject, but this class is all about a structured approach to the topic. It does a good job of it, too: we do have a marketing-school reputation to maintain. I gave it a good because it’s still tough to put a structure on a subjective thing, but I did like the approach.
MO 503: Human Behavior and Organization
Grading the Course: Low Pass
I had to give it the dreaded LP. This was by far the least-favorite course across the MBA 1 class. Every day brought new complaints about this one from my classmates, and we in fact bonded over it. The gist of my complaint: It’s a good idea to teach future managers how to handle difficult interpersonal situations, but it would be a much better approach to teach us tactics for handling those situations instead of creating “awareness” that situations exist. Frankly, we all know that already.
WINTER A
ACC 552: Managerial Accounting
Grading the Course: Good
I had a tough time grasping a lot of the concepts here, but plenty of people have pointed out how useful it is. And I agree: the big point here is cost allocation, and that’s certainly going to drive a lot of management decisions. Hopefully I can get things straight by the time I have to use it.
OMS 552: Operations Management
Grading the Course: Good
I liked this course a lot, and Ross is apparently ranked No. 1 for operations instruction. (That being production efficiency and such.) While the course is really cool and both profs are great, I wonder how much I will use process flow and design. I hope I do, though tech and media are a little less obvious in their need for ops calculations and explorations.
So there you go, readaz: your guide to the Ross core curriculum. The worst part of being done is that I won’t get to take classes anymore where all of my section is in attendance. Bummer.
Come this May I’ll be able to grade MAP as well, but I’m working on that one.
Peace!
During this wacky job-hunting Winter A quarter I forgot that I was going to have finals. Now one is Wednesday morning at 8 a.m. and there are two more the following day. Whoops.
Hey readaz.
Trying to find a job for summer = time-consuming and thus bad for blogging, but I got some mad cool news recently when I found out that I’m going to Bangalore, India, for five weeks as part of the Multidisciplinary Action Program (or MAP, for the acronymically challenged) at Ross. Sweet!
So, some background on this: all MBA1s do a MAP as the last quarter of the first year. At the end of December, the list of available projects comes out; about half of these are international, and this year there were projects in India, Ireland, Peru, Brazil, France and several others, as well as a bunch of domestic projects all over the U.S. Our top ten list of preferences was due in early January, and the school formed teams of 4-6 people based on preferences. I was lucky enough to get my number one pick: helping out these guys as they launch their mobile device in India, getting market feedback and other stuff useful to the company.
I’ll be gone from mid-March to mid-April, so I promise as much India blogging as I can find time to do. I gotta keep yinz updated on what it’s like to eat curries for breakfast, yo. Good times and ghee for all.
Hey fans.
My bad about not writing at ya, but we’re in the midst of interviewing season here at Ross, which has proven to be the weirdest time of the year so far. I thought the end of Fall B was pretty packed, but this is something else altogether.
People are definitely concerned about getting something for the summer, and while I think everyone’s secretly hoping they get something early and no longer have to worry about everything else, people are definitely gregarious and wishing each other luck. Frankly that’s why I’m glad I’m at Michigan: I’ve heard peeps at other schools will hate on your interview chances and be open about the cutthroat tactics, and I’m sure there are a few people here doing that, but they’re in the minority as far as anyone can tell.
Anyway, my first big interview is tomorrow — two 45-minute case+fit interviews in a row, so I’m sitting here reading up on cases and some company history. Wish me luck so’s I can rock things properly. Later.
Clearly I’ve spent this semester committing the web’s mortal sin of not updating, but I’m here to make that up to you dudes in Sammy G. style with a list. And to keep from fully ripping off the 11-item format, I added a bonus item.
So here it is, a UMich semester’s worth of the 12 most notable things about business school:
Business school is hard. “Dude, Pat, b-school is supposed to be all about partying hard, talking about owning things and schmoozing it up at free recruiter dinners. What the hell are you talking about?”
Dudes, you are wrong. B-school is most definitely not the walkthrough it’s described to be. People — probably med students and law-school grads — kept feeding me those lines about business school being the easiest professional school, and that my biggest concern would be my social schedule. If that’s true, then I made the right decision by not even pursuing medicine or law, because you should try putting some constant-growth perpetuities and heteroskedastic predictive models in your pipe and smoking it. It does not produce a delicious aroma, if you know what I’m sayin’. Point is, getting an MBA is not the joke it is made out to be.
- Business school does actually teach you about the real world. MBAs also get a bad rap for being too busy collecting salary to handle the real business of business, but that is mad unfair. There’s a reason most b-schools won’t take you right out of undergrad: they actually care about experience and getting a student body that knows what it’s like to get up and go to work in the morning. Then there are all the professors who get seriously paid for all the consulting work they do on the side, so it’s not like they’re walled off from the real-world application of their theories in the way that most professors generally are.
I’ll give you two examples: Sam Zell with Tribune Company, and the credit crunch that’s going on right now. Before b-school I would have just sat back and shook my head in confusion at what happened. Alright, on second thought, the credit crunch still makes me shake my head in confusion, but I certainly know about the reason Zell loaded up Tribune with so much debt and why it went south so fast. (Quick answer: debt has a multiplier effect that makes good times really good and bad times really bad, so he was betting that he’d make way more money when he turned things around at Tribune, except that he didn’t turn it around, so the company crashed a lot harder. Thanks, Prof. Purnanandam!) The part you learn the hard way is how to tell your boss he’s screwing up, but thanks to the MBA you can at least provide some good reasoning on why he’s screwing up.
- India produces a lot of b-school professors. Based on Ross, and on my in-laws’ b-school-prof friends in Bloomington, business-school faculty is apparently one of India’s leading exports. Five of my eight professors thus far have rocked the Subcontinent.
- Business schools like group work. A lot. Every one of my classes in Fall B (Ross typically breaks the semester into two halves, each with their own class schedule) involved an assigned group and extensive group work. This is usually fine, but more than a few examples of interpersonal drama have developed in my section as a result of people not getting along in group settings. (I had a serious free rider in one of my groups this quarter, but he was from another section so the drama is minimized.) I like group work for lots of things, but try getting 5-6 people together to try and work on a 12-page paper, all of whom have really busy schedules: it’s made me long several times for being able to just write my own term paper and get that mug done.
- Trying to teach soft skills is not a good way to spend academic time. Lots of b-school stuff is really useful, like statistics, valuation, marketing, negotiation, etc. But we also had a class this past quarter devoted to the soft skills of management and the different personality interactions in the workplace. We learned plenty of “awareness” of potential issues, but almost no tactical skills to use when, say, two dudes hate each other but both have to work in a team anyway. I might have found a particular tactical set useful, but just telling us that “People at work sometimes disagree” is, to put it mildly, a really questionable use of our tuition payments. Same goes for trying to teach creativity, friendliness or leadership: sometimes you got it, and sometimes you don’t.
- I really like my section. Our class of 420-odd people is broken up into six sections; I’m in Section Six, which is, as its numerical order would convey, the greatest of the sections. I really did luck out: it’s not often that you get a random grouping of people and get along with almost all of them. My section has been the real highlight of b-school.
- Bell’s beer, from Kalamazoo, is really good. I’m halfway through now, so I had to throw in a minor point to get the ball rolling for the second half of this list. It’s true, though: Bell’s really is good.
- Being in school has had a negative impact on my ability to follow pro sports. For the past six autumns I’ve always been full-on into Steeler fandom, able to follow not just the Black and Gold in-depth but the rest of the NFL, too. My Sundays were filled with Miller Lite (come on, it’s always on special), buffalo wings and highlight shows. Yet this year my Sundays are usually stuck finishing up finance problem sets and going to group meetings for whichever club, course or recruiting group recognized that Sunday is the only time of week we’re not all otherwise scheduled up. Now I’ve fallen way behind on the NFL, and even missed the Steelers’ come-from-behind win against Dallas last week. Not cool, man.
- Recruiting is a strange beast. G told me that law school doesn’t involve that much schmoozing — you go after firm interviews through a lottery, then they either take you or don’t. Around here, though, networking is how it’s done, whether you go for on-campus stuff or self-directed. If you want to get an interview, it really helps to be on the closed list, which you do by meeting enough people in advance and making a good enough impression that they add you in. That’s not to say you don’t need to know what you’re doing, because the acquaintance-making just helps you get an interview, not bypass it. If you’re freaking clueless, it isn’t going to matter.
But a lot of the firms started winnowing down their lists toward the end of the semester, so people started getting calls for invite-only stuff that they don’t discuss out of politeness. (Ross is known as the friendly, social b-school, so maybe at other schools people trumpet their invites. That would be some dick-move stuff, so I hope not.) As a result, you never know who’s going around with 12 different dinner invites, and because everyone has to interview anyway, nobody knows if it’s even going to matter in the end. So there’s this weird air of secrecy even as everybody tries to help each other out with case-interview practice and assorted other contacts. (If somebody’s cool, then it makes sense to help them get a job along with you so you can work with other cool people.) So we got that going for us, which is nice.
My favorite reaction to this secrecy thing has been the use of it to mess with gunners. (A gunner, for those who don’t know, is someone who tries way too hard to “outgun” all of their fellow students. It is not a good label, even among recruiters.) People have made up events and then bragged about them in jest just to get the more gunnery types worked up. “Did you get an invite to the Goldman-Sachs helicopter tour? Yeah man, they pick you up in a Sikorsky and fly you to Chicago to meet with 8 partners for dinner. I’m totally stoked.”
- The class motto this year: when in doubt, consult. As unlikely as it would have seemed to me a few years ago, the career goal right now is to get a job with one of the consulting firms, then work directly with media companies to get their ducks in a row in the industry. I didn’t think consulting would be a career for me with my whole not-that-corporate thing, but the more I learn about it, the more sense it makes considering I’ve wanted to do media-strategy work all along. That’s sort of a roundabout way to get into consulting, but my plan is pretty solid compared to some of the other people I know: With all the banks falling apart, consulting on campus right now is this crazed mass of people practicing case interviews and coming in anew from all directions. I don’t know who all these new dudes are, but we had people falling out the doors of the Bain presentation in November, and those people definitely weren’t there at the earlier presentations. As several students have said, “Consulting is like an extension of b-school for when you don’t know just what field you want to pursue.” I don’t really see it that way because I have a specific interest within the big C, but apparently the rest of the school would add that it’s a great place to go when panicked.
- Michigan is cold. Seriously man, it is.
- Business school was a good decision. I work my ass off, Outlook Calendar dictates most of my life, and plenty of this is flat-out hard. But after meeting some awesome and interesting people, finding interesting new career possibilities and learning how to turn some of the gears in the working world, I am down to roll for another three semesters and get to where it takes me.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my 1600-word discourse on just what I’ve been doing for the past four months. I’m starting my three-week time off, so I’ll do some more updating this time. I think. Peace out!
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