MBA Review Part II

On to the second set of classes. There's a really big jump from the bottom three to this set. Financial accounting was the only one of these that I really had any trouble with. As a rule I felt that I had no clue what was going on, but then I seemed to do OK in the exams and I understood all the financial statements I worked with other the summer so I guess I learned something.

• 20. Financial Accounting
• 19. Statistical Methods Applied to Education II
• 18. Marketing Channels
• 17. Quantitative Models in Marketing
• 16. Emerging Issues in New Product Development

Statistical Methods II (Revenge of the Statistical Methods) was really very simple and should have been a surefire A but I didn't spend nearly enough time on it when there were other more interesting classes to work on. I took Marketing Channels as an extra-elective because I hadn't really had any experience in the field and I figured it would be important for me to cover. I still believe that, but combined with job hunting it definitely made my last semester much more difficult. From Quant models came the following interview answer:

"Where do you see yourself in five years time?

Sitting in front of the same damn spreadsheet I'm working on now."

Emerging Issues in NPD is a great class and like a lot of the classes I took this last semester I wish I could have spent more time on it and had been able to go to more lectures. Interviews and travel seemed to take a disproportionate toll on EI-NPD due to it's place on the schedule as the last thing on Thursday afternoons. On the plus side, the Professor Rindfleisch is trying to incorporate past students (i.e. me and others) and their learnings in the field into the class going forward. I hope it works out. I think it's a great idea and apart from improving the class academically it will help forge stronger connections between alumni and the school.