Buy Low, Sell High

Some time towards the end of last term, one item popped up on our calendars- CIA debriefing.
No, our 'intelligent' class has nothing to do with the 'intelligence' agency. We were up for 'Change In Action' (CIA), something that we'll be doing for a week after every term's exams.

The best part of the entire CIA sequence was an oil-trading game we played. Basically, we were all given ten million Euros to spend in an online simulation. We had to invest a million at a time, based on some vague news clips, and at the end of it, we got to see whether our investment made money or tanked.

This was the most fun Demand-Supply example in economics, ever !!
Buy low, sell high !!

Needless to say, it became a race to the top. Everybody made more money than they lost. Not surprising, a friend of mine who was a trader before his MBA made the most!! He wasn't a commodities trader, so he had no undue advantage over the rest of us, but that doesn't matter. The "trader's attitude" did it!!

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Back to the 3-6-3 rule ??

'Accounting is Sexy, Accounting is Fun !'

... so goes the unofficial motto in our Financial Accountancy class.

Huh?? While we've gone through lots of BS, (not what you'd think. Balance Sheets. On second thought, maybe it really is just BS), I'm yet to see how could a wannabe MBA find accountancy sexy. Unless one thinks of Thandie Newton in Rock N Rolla, ha ha !

Maybe it's better this way. 'Coz when banking and accountancy get too sexy, and too much fun, then we all get into all sorts of trouble. Paul Krugman got this one right over a year ago.

Alas, the 3-6-3 rule is not an option, either.

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Ad-Coms - Getting Gamed

Fact : Almost all applicants to B-schools dedicate a good part of their application to proving how 'different' they are.
Fact : Each of the top B-schools claims to handpick a 'diverse' student body, diverse in their backgrounds as well as their career plans.

Inference : There should be a good amount of diversity in the jobs taken by MBA graduates.

Fact : The top B-schools place the bulk of their outgoing classes in Consulting and Finance. Industry, Marketing, and Entrepreneurship are pretty much looked down upon.

Doesn't really make sense, eh?

The most important reason would be that most people graduate from B-school laden with debt. Finance and Consulting are the best paymasters (a generalization, but fairly true). Ergo, these are the easiest way out to financial independence.

Another reason, many applicants have their hearts set on joining Consulting/Finance, but they mask their true intentions in their applications. Just long enough to get admitted. Interests in entrepreneurship, working for a non-profit materialize overnight, only to be cast aside on the first day in college.

Having seen so many of such frauds making it to B-school, I wonder, why don't the admission commitees chuck these applications out! They're fairly easy to spot too!

Such stinkers can be spotted from miles off. There are always a few tell-tale signs -
* social service undertaken just a year or two before applying
* unverfiable claims of holding leadership positions in organizations
* tall claims of leading large teams with little experience/qualification
* interested in Finance, yet unable to tell buy-side from sell-side
* unable to give a convincing reason for choosing one post-MBA career path

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