In Finance class (paraphrased):
You can bring a one page sheet to the exam with anything written on it. Some people ask if they can write on 2 sides… I’ll be even more generous, you can write on all 6 sides.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!
I’m a big geek.
Archive for November, 2006
Great Joke
Tuesday, November 28th, 2006MCA Industry Reception
Friday, November 24th, 2006Last night was the Management Consulting Association industry reception.
It was actually really useful. I learned a lot about the different firms and gained a better understanding of the industry. I really enjoyed it and got to spend a few minutes talking to lots of consultants (usually recent grads) from each of the firms. I’ll save my impressions about the firms.
In addition to talking to the consultants I also talk to, *GASP*, the Dean. He is really smart. Did I say that already? 
The guest speaker, George Stalk (Senior Vice President and Director @ BCG), discussed a lot about the new problems they are tackling at BCG and opportunities they are seeing opening up. Some interesting topics included:
- Supply chain issues that will cause some interesting problems with shipping from China and present lots of opportunities for North American manufacturers.
- Technologies that allow for “instant pricing.”
- Biz finally figuring out some of the uses of “infinite bandwidth” and how they can exploit network technologies to gain competitive advantages and not just operational effectiveness.
- The reason why “networking” is important for an organization.
I’m not sure if I necessarily agree with some of the models he showed us to support his conclusions (they seemed somewhat magical and may have made assumptions that don’t hold but he never really went into the assumptions so I can’t say for sure), none the less, interesting presentation.
Aside: The workload this week has gone through the roof. It looks like I’ll have 0 free time this weekend. 
Q1 Marks
Thursday, November 16th, 2006We got our Q1 Marks on Wednesday. I was pleasantly surprised by my MPO mark but other than that, no major surprises. I’ve noticed a trend—professors generally give everyone a B/B+.
The grading system at Rotman is based on letters. The letter grades get converted to GPA values and then a weighted average provides your final GPA. i.e. A+/A=4.0, A-=3.7, B+=3.3, B=3.0,… At Rotman, it’s suggested that no more than 15% of students be given an ‘A’ and no more than 5% of students get a failing grade (less than a B). This means that if professors are following the suggested grade curve, 80% of students get dropped into the B bucket. This makes it VERY difficult to differentiate yourself from your peers unless you get a bunch of A’s.
Some General Q2 Comments
Tuesday, November 14th, 2006I haven’t really posted anything about Q2 (other than the obligatory first post). In general, there isn’t anything to say but here are some things I can throw out there:
- difficulty(Q2)>>difficulty(Q1)
- workload(Q2)>workload(Q1)
- freakingOut(Q2)<freakingOut(Q1)
- interestingContent(Q2)>interestingContent(Q1)
- jobSearchStress(Q2)>jobSearchSress(Q1)
That was geeky. Anyways, Friday is the Rotman Semi-formal. I’ve been trying to sell tickets but it seems like demand is pretty low. Hopefully there will be a surge in demand in the next few days.
I’m probably going to enter the Rotman photography competition.
Hopefully I’ll have something of value to post in the next few days.
The Impact of NAFTA on the Wine Industry
Wednesday, November 8th, 2006I was at the CABC Forum on Competitiveness today. One of the speakers provided an analogy to describe what it felt like to be in the wine industry after the elimination of a lot of the protectionisms. It was something simillar to:
It felt like being in a dark alley and suddenly being chased by a guy with a knife. But we found out we could really run.
Pretty good (and funny) analogy.
The forum didn’t go to deep into any of the issues but I did get free breakfast; so there was that.
Same Artwork
Monday, November 6th, 2006
Q2 Courses
Saturday, November 4th, 2006Just like the previous post, I just wanted to give my initial impressions of the Q2 courses. Just in case you don’t know, case discussion preparation takes about 2-3 hours. Here we go:
- Managing Customer Value (MCV) A.K.A. Marketing
This course (to my surprise) sounds like it could be kind of interesting. The focus of this course is analytics, not creative jingles. I’m not sure where I’ll stand on this course in the end but the analysis of customers has some appeal to me. One major worry is the the workload. There are case discussions in every other class, 3 cases to hand in, and a take home exam. Take home exams, ugh. - Fundamentals of Strategy
This course is really cool so far. I’ve enjoyed the way the first two classes were executed and there were lots of interesting learning points. The workload for this course is quite high: Case discussion in every class, some tough readings, a final exam, and a case competition after the exam week. This course is very complimentary to MCV. - Business Finance
This course is a little up in the air for me right now. We’ve defiantly had some interesting discussions (especially after the income trust announcement) but all we’ve really learned in the time-value of money and present value type things—stuff I already kind of knew. The workload for this course is somewhere in the middle: 3 cases to hand in (solved in a group), occasional heavy reading, and a final exam. - Business Accounting
This is just a continuation of the first quarter course. Not much to say here other than the workload is on the lower end: A group assignment to compare two companies, occasional readings, and a final exam. - Statistics for Managers
Again, this is a continuation of the first quarter course. The workload is medium-low: A group assignment to analyze some stats from a real company, a quiz, and a final exam.
One final thing I’d like to mention is that of the Q1 courses, Economics seems to be the most important for Q2. A lot of economic concepts have already been applied in MCV, strategy, and finance.
Randomness
Wednesday, November 1st, 2006Yesterday night, I saw George Stroumboulopoulos at the bar. Yeah, that’s right.
Tonight we had the first GBC meeting. There isn’t much to say, it was pretty much a briefing on what’s going on and things we can do to help.