Riz’s Rotman Blog

I was asked by Paula to write up some words of wisdom for the Unofficial guide to Rotman. I’m also posting my answers on here. (some of these were brought up in my earlier tips)

Textbooks:

• Don’t buy them until you have to. The store seems to have more than enough textbooks so don’t worry about them running out. Reading them is also usually optional (Google is your friend).

Tips for Study Groups (what worked well/what didn’t work well):

• It sounds silly but MAKE A CONTRACT. Let me say that again MAKE A CONTRACT. Outline meeting rules, expectations for attendance, acceptable e-mail/phone times (e.g. no 1am phone calls), and standard meeting times/days.
• During the first week, after you get the due dates from all your courses, hold a group meeting. At the meeting draw a big calendar on the board and write out all the due dates. Now figure out how and when you’re going to finish all your work. It’s scary when you see all the stuff that’s due.
• Use survey monkey to create anonymous surveys of each group member’s performance. Do some 360 feedback after the group disbands to help everyone improve their work with the next group.

Tips on Courses:

• All courses – Always apply the “does this make sense” or “would a 10 year old laugh at me for this answer” test. It sounds funny but it’s really easy to get caught up in the process, tools, and terminology to produce a solution that would even get you kicked out of Schulich (Harsh Burn! ). Just think about answers for a bit and walk through the logic in your head before you move forward.
• Accounting – Le Yawn. (sorry, I have no words of wisdom here, just bite your lip and do what you gotta do)
• Economics – Very important for Strategy and other courses later on. The basis for a lot of future theory. The lectures are where it’s at so don’t skip class. Reading the book isn’t very useful before class but can be very useful after class.
• Ethics - Write your reaction paper’s early and choose topics that you have some personal experience with.
• Finance – Don’t split the cases up among group members, you’ll hurt yourself for the exam. The cases aren’t too long, every group member should do it on their own and come together to compare (and argue) about answers. This is the best studying for the exam you could ever do.
• Integrative Thinking Practicum – Gah! This class will eat your life if you let it. Focus on the mental model merging stuff they teach you and less about the details of your project solution. Hopefully they reorganize the course this year to make it easier for you to learn about model merging before you finish your slide deck for the project.
• Negotiations – Before you come in make a plan for how to approach the experiential exercises in a way to actually make you learn. For example, be really confrontational and keep info close to the vest for the first negotiation and then very cooperative and freely share information for the 2nd. Use what you learn from the first 2 to try a 3rd strategy for the next exercise..
• Operations – Pay attention in statistics. Engineering degrees help.
• Statistics – Make sure you know how the data was collected for your project if you don’t collect it yourself. This will save you hours (if not days) of rework. Don’t sweat the quizzes too much.
• Strategy – “Trust the tools.” Tim Rowley always says this and he’s right. Don’t go with your gut (yet).

I’ve finished everything for first year. All that’s left is to hand in a group ethics paper but I’ve already done my work for it.

This year has been extremely difficult. The amount of work is not over exagerated and I’m burnt out right now. Thankfully I don’t have to start work for a bit.

I doubt I’ll be posting very much during the summer but leave a comment is there’s anything you want to know.

Have a good summer!

Don’t get frustrated when you find that you’re no longer the smartest kid in class. It’s something that takes some getting use to. The program has some of the smartest and most competitive people I’ve ever met. Rotman marks on a very strict bell curve. In some classes there seems to be no relationship between the work and the mark. This means you can usually expect a B+.