Saturday, November 29, 2008
Academics at the GSB - the good, the bad and the ugly
[Original post removed - summary: the flexible curriculum has its challenges. If you have an Econ background, know your stats and/or have the CFA you likely will end up repeating some stuff. There are plenty of not so great profs and it can be hard to get the good profs and/or popular classes.]
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8 comments:
Hey, Happy Thanksgiving.. hope you had fun with family.. and thanks for this post.. I like the fact that you say things how they are.. you can't imagine how helpful this post will be for prospective candidates for years to come.. may be you should consider writing a short book on your experience..
A.nony
Ridiculously useful, honest, and forthright post. Every Booth applicant should read this at least twice to get a full view of academics at the school -- not just rah rah you hear at GSB Live. I'm surprised there aren't more comments/kudos.
That being said, I still hope I get accepted in a couple weeks because I don't have a business background and will not encounter some of the problems you listed. Happy, Healthy Holidays to you and yours!
That was a really great post. Can you please post something more like this? (Maybe on the students themselves, or how the internship scene is, or how the FT recruiting scene is.)
I ask only because it's so incredibly hard to find such honest feedback on ANY school. Your ability to highlight the negative aspects of your experience is MUCH appreciated.
So glad it helps. Always makes me a little uncomfortable to be so blunt. If you select the "career" or "IM" category you should find some pretty blunt posts on the internship scene in IM last year and maybe some fall FT recruiting which I've posted sporadically about. But more to come ...
Completely agree with you about the bidding as I had that same problem at Wharton. I don't know why there was a need to build a market around getting the classes you need or develop another thing for someone to arbitrage just because they can.
hi MaybeMBA, i'm an incoming student at Booth this fall. since I already have a CFA, I'd like to focus my classes on marketing/strategy. however, after reading your post, I realize these courses maybe hard to get into because of capacity issues.
My question is: can one simply audit classes without registering? i'm thinking if I can't get into my faviorite class, I can just audit the class, then take some BS class to satisfy credit requirements. What is your take on such approach?
Hi Michael, Welcome and Congrats! I imagine you will be able to get into a lot of marketing/strategy classes at Booth. It's getting the classes with the most popular professors which may prove challenging and you should be prepared to compromise on. But if you aren't spending lots of points trying to get into the top professors in other subjects, you should have plenty of points to spend on getting the best profs for marketing/strategy. If that's your focus - I would spend the points there and be prepared to take less expensive (and possibly not so great) profs in other areas.
During orientation next fall try to get a sense from the course price history, what two years of your dream courses might cost you and budget accordingly. Some upper level courses are only taught one quarter a year so you want to be prepared with sufficient points in those quarters. And definitely make a visit to academic Services for help if you want (Gramhofer is the best person for advice but also the busiest).
But yes, many profs do allow you to audit courses, which you can definitely use as a back up option. But you get far more out of a class by actually enrolling so would only use audits only in emergencies. (such as it's your last quarter and you've still not gotten into XYZ course)
Enjoy!
thanks!
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