Guessing my way to an MBA

Above is a screen shot of a page from my statistics final during Mod I. On this particular section we had to choose between "true" or "false" on ten questions. And I just happened to get the first seven wrong. The amazing thing is I still managed to get a grade on the final that was slightly above the class average.

I wonder what the probability distribution is of a clueless student taking an exam where on each question he randomly chooses between two choices available and gets the first seven all wrong.

Taking a tumble in Financial Times rankings

The Financial Times released today its 2006 rankings of business schools around the world. When I came to Kenan-Flagler for my interview last year, the students I spoke to were excited about the recent 2005 rankings which placed Kenan-Flagler number 13 among U.S. business schools and number 17 among business schools worldwide.

 

Unfortunately, the Financial Times rankings have not been as generous to us this year. The new rankings placed Kenan-Flagler number 16 among U.S. business schools and number 29 among business schools worldwide. Darden dropped from number 20 (worldwide) to number 24. Yale School of Management dropped from number 9 (worldwide) to number 11 and the Johnson School at Cornell University dropped from number 24 (worldwide) to number 36.

Faith versus fear

A friend of mine recalls the internship search as one of the less pleasant experiences of his MBA program. I personally find the search process to be quite stressful. When there is nothing on my mind, it automatically drifts to entertaining the worst case scenarios of the fates that befall MBA students who are unable to find that all-important summer internship.

 

The main cause of this stress is the simple fact that my cover letters and resumes have not resulted in the number of interviews I was hoping for. The only nice surprise so far has been that I got an interview for one of the best finance (non investment banking) internship in a top firm with an extremely recognizable brand name. Looking at the names of the other classmates that were also offered an interview, I was flattered that the firm considers me to be in the same “league” as these folks. But at the same time, I am perplexed as to how I managed to get selected for this interview but yet not get some of the less competitive ones.

 

I have blogged about the importance of trusting God with the various circumstances in my life. Learning to trust God and to have faith in His plans has been the most important thing I have learned so far at Kenan-Flagler outside of the classroom. I pray fervently for God’s will to prevail over matters such as my time at Kenan-Flagler, my life post-MBA, and my relationships with various people. When I think about God’s plans for my future and the enormous resources that are available for Him to put them into fruition, I tremble at how blessed I am and feel an incredible sense of peace. Yet when I look at the reality of what I see around me (such as the reality that I have not gotten too many interviews), I cannot help but worry.

AOL raises price on unlimited dialup plan

While I think AOL is doing the right thing in announcing the alliance with AT&T, BellSouth, and Qwest Communications to offer AOL branded broadband service, raising the prices on our existing dial-up members is just idiotic.

"AOL will also raise the price of its dial-up service to $25.90, from $23.90, to encourage customers to upgrade to a broadband service." Article

You don't need to have taken the core strategery class to know this makes no sense. If I remember correctly, 75% of our 20 million members are still on the dial-up plan. The only thing these customers will be encouraged to do is to switch to Net Zero.

On this day in 2005 …

Earlier this afternoon when I jogged through the main campus at UNC, I realized that it was on this day last year that I came to Chapel Hill for the first time. I had my class visit, lunch, tour, and admissions interview. It was my first time at Chapel Hill and on the UNC campus, where I took the above picture. I sat in on the same accounting class that I am taking now. During the lecture, the professor talked about the AOL/Time Warner merger and he kept referring to the CEO of the parent company I worked for as Alan Parsons. I had to exercise great restraint to keep from raising my hand to correct him. All that happened one year ago today.

And what a year it’s been. In the next twelve months, I got into Kenan-Flagler, interviewed at two other schools, got rejected by one, accepted by the other, and had to wait until literally the last minute for Darden to officially reject me from its wait list. I quit my job, went to Key West for an incredible wedding, came down to Kenan-Flagler for pre-MBA workshop, moved my possessions to Chapel Hill, and sold the condo. I went with my classmates to Charlotte and New York to visit investment banks and to Omaha to meet Warren Buffett. On the spiritual front, I increasingly felt God telling me to trust Him and to place my hope in His plans rather than in the daily “goods” and “bads” that come my way.

While many things change, others remain the same. In yesterday’s accounting class we did the same lecture that I sat in on a year ago, except the professor now presents his material with Power Point slides. He once again identified the Time Warner CEO as Alan Parsons. Only this time, he had a former Time Warner employee sitting in the second row who raised his hand to correct him.

Attention all Kenan-Flagler applicants

January is a busy time for the folks involved with our admissions process. The application process is in full swing and tons of applicants visit everyday. It was this week last January that I came to Chapel Hill for the first time, sat in on a class, had lunch with students, went on a tour, and had my interview.

 

When there are applicants are sitting in on a class, the custom is for the professor to begin class by asking them introduce themselves. If you are an applicant to Kenan-Flagler and plan on sitting in on a class in the near future, please do not do something that I have noticed some applicants would periodically do. Please do not end your introduction by saying “I am here to apply for the MBA program.”

 

Kenan-Flagler students are quite smart. If we see you sitting in a classroom wearing a suit and we do not recognize you, we know you are an applicant. There is no need to repeat the obvious for there is no risk of us mistaking you for the guy/gal interviewing to become the next football coach at UVA.

 

Best of luck with your applications and I hope to meet you April 7 – 9 during the MBA Experience Weekend.

An endorsement of our management communications class

One of my five classes this Mod is management communications. This class was created about five years ago when the associate dean took a survey of all the companies that recruit at Kenan-Flagler and found out that good communications skills ranked as the top trait they used to gauge the quality of the students they interview. In this class, we mainly work on our oral presentation skills and our written communication skills .

 

Last week’s Wall Street Journal had an interesting article about exactly why a class like this is useful to anyone earning an MBA.

 

“For Chris Aisenbrey, director of global university relations at Whirlpool Corp., it's a daunting challenge these days to hire literate M.B.A. students who can write a coherent letter or memo. Too often, what he gets from job applicants are collections of rambling thoughts littered with misspellings and grammatical gaffes.” – Wall Street Journal article

New MBAs finding education pays off big time

“The $106,000 salary and signing bonus was up 13.5% from 2004, according to a GMAC survey of 5,829 2005 grads. Salary alone increased to $88,600, surpassing the previous high of $85,400 set in 2001. The 2005 salary still trails 2001 by about $4,000 when adjusted for inflation, but the inflation-adjusted record will likely be broken this year.”  - USA Today article

Giving a lecture to dental residents

I received the following email ten minutes ago:

Hi Dr. (my last name),

 

Just wanted to confirm you will be giving a lecture to dental residents today 3:30-5pm room 309 Brauer Hall.  Topic is Pharmacology of IV Anesthetic Agents

 

thanks and see you at 3:30.

 

julie

 

Hmm ..... strangely, this is not on my calendar. If I had agreed to give a lecture at the dental school I think I would have remembered. I also don't recall ever having earned a degree to be qualified to be addressed as "doctor." I am not sure if I will go or not. Maybe I will give the lecture and in return I will get a free dental check up.

Nice break in the schedule

This is a four day weekend for me because I had no classes on Friday and the entire University is closed today for Dr. King Day. I have another four day weekend coming up because Kenan-Flagler is giving us the coming Thursday and Friday off to prepare for our interviews. I can really get used to this.

 

Something else I have gotten used to is the much lighter schedule during Mod III. During Mod I we had three Friday classes (accounting, microeconomics, and statistics) and during Mod II we had two (operations and marketing). With no Friday classes this Mod, , not only do I spend less time in the classroom, I also do not have to prepare for the Friday lessons. This will give me the chance to sharpen those cover letters and to research all those companies I am interested in interning for.

Good riddance

It is so nice to not have Friday classes. I went out to Lucy’s last night and didn’t have to worry about putting on a show the next morning to pretend as though I have done the reading or how I would manage to stay awake during class. The only things on my mind were when my favorite 80s songs were coming on and whether that girl at the bar was the same cutie I noticed for the first time earlier this week.

Good deal on the Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal’s current offer for students (I assume schools other than Kenan-Flagler have access to this offer as well) is 15 weeks plus online access for $19.95. This is the best offer I have seen in a long while.

 

New subscribers can subscribe via the web site. Current subscribers will have to call 1-800-JOURNAL to renew using this offer.  

So far, so good

First week of classes has ended and we’re off to a pretty happening start. This is the first Mod where I can say that all my professors are good instructors. There is also quite a diversity in the instructors as well, one has a German accent while another has a British accent. Two of my professors I already know from outside the business school, one I met in church and another I met in October when Ken Elzinga spoke at Intervarsity.

 

I am excited that my ethics class ends in mid-February, meaning my Mondays and Wednesdays will begin much later on those days. The grading for ethics is extremely lenient. The professor said he’s only qualified to judge whether we’ve done the work or not, not on our ethnics, and therefore everyone gets either a pass or a fail. We have to do two case write ups out of the six we will discuss in class. I am going to do them as early I can in the Mod. To be completely frank, I am tempted to stop going to class altogether after I have handed in my assignments.  I figured since there aren’t enough seats in the classroom, the ethical thing to do would be to skip class and give the seats to the classmates that have yet to hand in their assignments. I would sure my professor would agree. ;)

 

The most interesting class this Mod is probably accounting. This was the class that I sat in on last year when I was here for my school visit. On that day we discussed the accounting methods of Global Crossing and AOL Time Warner. Speaking of AOL, I am amazed at how many times the AOL/Time Warner merger gets mentioned in class. My finance professor mentioned it yesterday and we will be discussing in corporate strategy later this Mod the Harvard Business School case (9-702-421) on the “merger of the century.” 

 

It’s 66 degrees right nowinChapel Hill. I am going to go out for a jog.

Fat city for investment bankers

In case any of my classmates who are preparing for next week’s round of investment banking interviews need any additional encouragement.

 

"Ferrari dealers get ready: Wall Street bonuses are in and they are big.

Alan G. Hevesi, the New York state comptroller, announced today that Wall Street bonuses are estimated to hit a record $21.5 billion for 2005, surpassing the previous record of $19.5 billion of 2000. Those bonuses were driven by record profits at many of Wall Street's major banks, including Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers."  - New York Times article

Please buy a Thinkpad

I had an accident this past weekend and, as a result, the “Home” key on my Thinkpad T43’s keyboard broke off. Originally I wasn’t going to get it fixed because I did not purchase the $250 insurance but decided to bring it into the computing helpdesk just to see what my options are. The woman at the front desk told me it’s covered by my warranty and by the end of the day my ThinkPad had a new keyboard.

 

When I bought my laptop this past summer, I had to choose between Dell and Thinkpad. The Thinkpads are more expensive but they are worth every penny. A classmate used to work for a company that only used Dell laptops and he thinks the Thinkpads are by far a superior product.

I resolve …..

A couple of folks have asked about my new year’s resolutions. Here they are, again in no particular order of importance:

 

1. Eat less junk food. This means choosing the apple instead of potato chips at Panera and laying off the fried food at Café McColl. The latter should not be a problem since Café McColl just started serving burritos from Cosmic Cantina.
2. Drink less soda. Even though I own shares of Cola-Cola in my Roth IRA account, I need to start investing in my health.
3. Do a better job at managing and focusing my time. I really need to better allocate my time so that the time I spend doing work is spent actually doing work instead of staring into blank space, reading other people’s blogs, or reading the New York Times. In addition, I am going to think about how I can save time doing errands by combining my trips.
4. Start exercising. Went to the Student Recreation Center several times last week and did some jogging today and yesterday in the warm weather. I hope I can keep this up.
5. Watch how I spend my money. My father and my uncle were talking at a recent family event. My uncle talked about someone he knows at the Johnson School (Cornell) and how he’s spending a huge sum of money on career treks, trips home, and trips to international destinations. My dad said he’s amazed how much MBA students have to spend inaddition to our tuition. A good example is the course packs we have to buy for our classes. This Mod I had to buy two course packs for finance and accounting classes. They contain the course material packaged in a two one-inch binders that cost $130 altogether.
6. Trust God with everything that happens in my life. If you (and I certainly belong to this category) react to good things in your life with “Praise the Lord,” you have to be equally faithful when things don’t go your way.
7. Pray that I'd be able to trust God. Trusting God is something that’s always easier said than done.

Here we go again!

Mod III officially kicks off today. Starting this Mod, first years are no longer required to take all our classes together and we have more choice course selection and our schedule. My five classes this Mod are financial statement analysis (which I will henceforth refer to as accounting), fundamentals of corporate finance (finance), corporate strategy, management communications, and ethics. One good thing about my schedule is that everyday begins at 11 and I have no classes on Fridays. The bad thing about the schedule is that my Mondays and Wednesdays don’t end until 5pm which is a hassle since two other students from my carpool have 8am until 12:20 classes and I am going to need to find myself another carpool to go to school with and possibly take the bus home on those days.

                                  

“What’s this about a carpool?” you ask. I have never mentioned this on the blog and this is something Kenan-Flagler doesn’t go out of its way to advertise. The Kenan-Flagler parking garage is only big enough to hold cars for less than half the students. The school therefore forces students to form carpools (groups of four first years or groups of two second years) and issues parking permits to carpools rather than to individual students. This worked well in the last two Mods because carpools are formed with students from your section and most students from the same sections would have the same classes but there were days when I had to take the bus home because I had to stay late after class and was unable to find a ride with someone else. This is the one thing I like the least about the school and I have a feeling I am going to like it even less in the weeks to come.

Joining a league of my own

I’d like to welcome the readers that are joining us via the League of MBA Bloggers. Someone a while back had suggested that this blog be included and the roster was updated earlier this week.

Google to offer new video download service

Always enjoy scooping McCoy on a story about his favorite company.

"Google Inc is to allow users of its site to buy videos from content partners in an upgrade to its video-search service, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter."

The entire article is found here.

Heartbreak in West Virginia

I was watching MSNBC this morning and saw a woman identified as Anna Kasto, a relative of a dead miner in West Virginia. She said something that broke my heart.

 

“We are Christian people. Some of us don’t even know if there is a Lord anymore. He has taken this miracle from us.” 

 

Yesterday as I was driving back to Chapel Hill, I thought about something a pastor said about five years ago. I am not sure why I thought about it, maybe it was because I had the radio on and was listening to the news concerning the miners. The pastor said instead of filtering God through the perspective of life (such as asking yourself “why would God allow (fill in the blank) to happen?”), we should filter life through the perspective of God.

 

It is so important for folks to get this right because life is never guaranteed to unfold the way we want to. You will sometimes be pleasantly surprised by the unexpected good things that happen but oftentimes you will be disappointed when they don’t go our way. I am going to pray that these people continue to place their trust in the Lord and that we are able to continue to place our trust in the Lord regardless of how our lives unfold before us.