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FEBRUARY 2003 MBA JOURNAL: YEAR TWO Scott Anderson: Academics, the Placement Process, and More "I look back on the past ten weeks and I realize I have accomplished none of my three major goals for the quarter: 1) Become a regular at a local tavern; 2) Find a job; and 3) Clean out my email inbox from last year." Every morning this fall, I woke up, looked at my Financial Decisions course packet, struggled with one of the assigned academic journal articles, and wished that having this "matrix and vector" vision of the world had been listed as one of the prerequisites for taking this PhD level class (okay, "every morning" may be a seven-fold exaggeration of my course-pack viewing frequency, but they were the mornings our weekly exams were emailed to us-these mornings stretched into the afternoon, and then into the evening, and sometimes back into the next morning, when the exams were due). After an intellectually disappointing summer in investment banking, I started the school year entertaining the idea of pursuing a PhD in finance or economics. This class was a test. I certainly appreciated the academic atmosphere. At least once a class, one of the students who actually had understood the assigned article from the Journal of Finance would challenge a theory. Fama would think about the point and then propose a study that "could be done in an afternoon" to test an alternative hypothesis. It was neat to see the guru in action. Most of the time, however, I found myself demoralized, looking at a blackboard of Greek letters realizing that I would not be cut out for PhD level work unless I spent a year studying linear algebra, differential equations, and heavy duty statistics. And even if I understood all of the concepts, I would prefer more practical applications of tools and less theory. But I look at the experience as similar to banking internship this summer. I would never know that the path was not right for me unless I tried it. Almost all GSB students serious about fixed income trading or research on either the buy-side (at a hedge fund or mutual fund) or sell-side (at an investment bank) take fixed income asset pricing class taught by Pietro Veronesi. Veronesi's notes may have had even more Greek letters than Fama's blackboard, but he brushed over the derivation of formulae and emphasized only how we (presumed future traders) could use them to find the price of different securities. Although the complex math in this class deflated even further my illusions of mathematical proficiency, I had ample opportunity to build cool pricing models in Excel and work closely with friends who had worked on trading desks this summer. This is not to debunk the notion that second year classes can be easier than first year classes. The difference is that second year students typically have most of their requirements fulfilled, so they have choices. A CPA who wants to coast can just take a whole bunch of accounting classes now that she's through with the more creatively challenging marketing and competitive strategy classes. But I sense that most people at the GSB choose to take challenging courses (perhaps in part because of the grade non-disclosure policy) once their intro-level requirements are out of the way. So, second year ends up being harder for most students. (There are exceptions, such as the quantitatively challenged poet who struggled through statistics, microeconomics, and accounting his first year and the overachiever who took 11 of the required total of 20 classes during his first year and only nine second year.) Of course, there is more to first quarter of second year than just classes, especially when you don't have a job for next year. I look back on the past ten weeks and I realize I have accomplished none of my three major goals for the quarter: 1) Become a regular at a local tavern; 2) Find a job; and 3) Clean out my email inbox from last year. One coup: I did become a regular at the Bourgeois Pig, a left-leaning café ("No Starbucks mugs allowed") near my house and even managed to convince one of the baristas that: 1) the last 12 months of corporate governance scandals are not representative of capitalism; 2) that corporations are not in a conspiracy to exploit the downtrodden of the world; and 3) that trade and investment actually help developing nations. (Might I have a future in the public relations department for the IMF or World Bank?) Unfortunately, no job offer materialized, in spite of interviews I did with about a dozen firms. That puts me in a kind of funny position as a student advisor for the career services department. How much credibility do I have advising first year students on investment banking in one-on-one appointments and informational panels when I'm not going into the field? The student advisors and career services department actually play an important role in the job search. As I have discussed at length in previous entries, I still think that the informal mentoring I got from second year students last year was most helpful in preparing me for recruiting last year. In addition to providing an always available source for counseling, the more formal career services-sponsored panels and practice interview sessions institutionalize the goals and benchmarks that precede interviews for first years (Do you really want to pursue a specific career? Do you have your resume ready? Do you have a convincing story for why you should go into the specific career? Do you know the background on the different firms you're targeting? Are you ready to interview with these firms?). * Background: Fama has been on the faculty since the 60's and is famous for declaring CAPM dead in the early 70's, producing the three factor model, and being one of the most prolific defendants of efficient markets.
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