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JANUARY 1999 MBA JOURNAL: FIRST SEMESTER WRAPUP Raghu Ponnapalli: The Second Half of First Semester
Let me describe the grading and testing system here at LBS. It's much different from what most Americans are used to. A passing grade here is a 50; 62-75 is what they call a Merit; and a 75 and up is a Distinction. Distinctions are rare, and grades in the high 80s are almost never seen. This system of grading can be quite distressing when you first experience it, but soon you're not surprised anymore when you find yourself excited about the prospect of getting a 75! The testing system is also somewhat unusual. All tests are taken using your student number. The professor has no idea whose paper he is grading. The tests are then regraded by a second professor and averaged with the first. It doesn't stop there, though, because next, all the tests are sent out to an external examiner for a third impartial review. Finally, if any students receive extremely high or low grades, the test is reviewed one last time. After the Financial Analysis exam, we still had three more tests to take and a lot of projects to wrap up. The reports had to be written on our company visits, and Corporate Finance had some particularly detailed analyses due. It was getting to the point where I only had time for working and sleeping. We also had to start thinking about the "shadowing" project. Though it isn't due until the beginning of the third term, we are supposed to start it around the end of the second term. It consists of following an executive through his/her daily schedule for a week and reporting on what we observe. Some of the students are already scrambling to find a suitable candidate, but many others, including myself, have decided to wait until the next term. Something else we all have to worry about is the language requirement. We must all be fluent in (read/write/speak) a second language by the time we graduate. Some of the students have signed up for language courses during the first term. Those that already have another language can sit back and relax, but some are learning a new one! I haven't made up my mind yet on which language to learn. I'm debating between learning a new language (German) or brushing up on Spanish and making do with that. Since there is plenty of time, I'm delaying this decision until I can get a better feel for which language would help my career the most. Finals came and went, and winter break arrived. We didn't have to deal with midterms, since LBS operates on a trimester system. However, these finals were not easy! Two classes gave us long take-homes, and the other gave a sitdown. There were a lot of late nights and long days of studying. In all, I thought the work was manageable. The difficulty of the projects and assignments could not be underestimated, but it was the sheer volume of work that challenged me the most. LBS is obviously trying to acclimate us to handling lots of work and spending long hours completing it. This training will come in handy during (what I hear are) grueling summer assignments. I spent my winter break in New York and arrived back in London a week before classes started. I came back a bit early because I had gotten myself invited to a special event that the school was hosting. LBS's core strengths are strategy and finance, and this event was focused on strategy. The school had arranged a seminar for some of the most senior executives at Compaq. A similar session had been held at Harvard the year before, and this was to be a "reunion" meeting. The executives were getting together to refocus and restate their goals, and to explore new directions for the company. The seminar was run by some of the best faculty at LBS, along with a professor from Stanford. I had gotten invited through a contact at the technology club. Eleven MBAs and 11 LBS Sloan program students were invited to attend. This was to be an experiment to see if the students' views would add value to the discussion. As far as anyone could tell, none of the top schools (in the U.S. or Europe) had included students in these kinds of sessions before. The majority of the students who were invited had no technology experience whatsoever. Only a handful of us had tech backgrounds. After all was said and done, we all agreed that it had gone great! This event has been the best experience I've had so far at LBS. We were given the opportunity to freely state our views as well as listen in on lecture discussions with the execs. We were also broken out into small teams (two students and four execs) to discuss specific issues. It has given me a whole new insight into strategic thinking and made me consider career options I hadn't given a thought to before. I've discovered that general management positions can be extremely interesting and challenging. The MBA program as a whole has had an interesting effect on me. Rather than becoming more focused on what I wanted to do with my career, the program has only served to open up other possibilities. Back to the classes. For the second term, all of the first-year class is taking the following courses: - Corporate Finance (the second part). - Designing Effective Organizations (first half of term two) - Human Resources Management (second half of term two) - Decision Risk Analysis - Marketing - Information Management While juggling all of the above, we have to make time for the company presentations. In the first term, most of the presentations were for full-time employment, but some were also for those of us looking for summer associate positions. This term (Term 2) recruiters are focusing only on us first-years. The upshot: There has been a presentation every single day so far! I've been attending quite a few and have started sending applications in. Interviews and offers are going to be made throughout the next three months. But some companies are still going to be recruiting come May and June. Recruitment season is going to be a real busy time for us. I'll let you know how it all turns out...  Raghu Ponnapalli  | | [an error occurred while processing this directive] Learn about your online education options |
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