Tuck's Intensive Numbers Crunch

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Each incoming student must purchase a black laptop (guess who brought a gleaming white iBook to camp?) that comes loaded with all of the applications he or she will need during study at Tuck. The laptops are essential for getting Excel skills up to par.

Sublime Panic

A student who worked in publishing before starting at Tuck confessed one night at dinner that prior to math camp, she hadn't known to use an asterisk—as opposed to the letter X—to indicate multiplication in Excel formulas. Although most students arrive with more Excel experience, it's exactly those kinds of details that students need to resolve before the real work begins.

Not long after the 8 a.m. start time on Wednesday morning, Regan's class pauses as a pre-lecture quiz is distributed. We're starting a new section on accounting, and the first page shows a balance sheet and asks the value for equity. The next page consists of a block of T-accounts and asks for the final amount in total liabilities and equity.

Just as I'm contemplating an emergency airlift out of Hanover, Regan says to the group, "Don't fake it. If you don't know it, just have a cup of coffee and hang out for 20 minutes." A math quiz you're not required to struggle through is my kind of math quiz. A few of us take him up on the offer and skitter toward the snacks in the hallway.

Removing the Rust

As students face down stumbling blocks, Regan constantly reassures as he teaches. "We've come a long way since yesterday, taking each bite one at a time, to the point where here we're eating a sandwich," Regan says as he wraps up bond pricing.

The next day, he drops the chalk from his fingers and says, "All the calculus you need to know at Tuck could fit on the palm of my hand." The week is as much about instilling a sense of math confidence as it is about learning formulas and economic terms.

"The basic math is mostly algebra. Everyone could do it in high school, and they probably had no phobias or confidence issues whatsoever at that time. But later in life, as they went away from it, they got less comfortable with quant things," says Regan. "What we need to do is take the rust off and introduce it to them in a reasonable way, broken down in simple steps. It's not that hard to do if it's well laid-out and well taught to bright students."

Relaxation Variable

Tuck students themselves are also reassuring. The start of every section begins with a small set of student introductions and announcements for hikes, runs, and soccer games. Students invited to attend PEP have often been away from the classroom for longer than others and come from a broader range of professional fields and academic backgrounds. It's proof that not everyone has been running models on Wall Street for the past four years. One teaching assistant has a sturdy black Labrador retriever, Pax, who wanders around the lecture hall.

Class ends at 5 p.m. with a post-diagnostic quiz on four days, but then we go off to a group dinner under a tent in Tuck's Byrne Courtyard. Those students not heading home to young families or unpacked boxes can enjoy going out for drinks with clusters of new friends. They imbibe at Murphy's on Main Street into the late night hours. Math isn't the focus so much as meeting new people and solidifying a network of support for the upcoming semester.

With math camp tiring but manageable, one has to wonder: Can someone with a completely nonanalytical background attend a top-notch B-school?

"The majority of students have revamped the analytical side of their application," says Sally Jaeger, assistant dean and director of the MBA program. This means building a post-grad transcript that includes microeconomics, statistics, financial accounting, and a class that puts you through the paces of Excel. "Even if students don't have a top percentile score on the GMAT, they've got a really strong analytical background. They're not applying to B-school unless they have it. There's a really big self-selection process that goes on."