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Courses for Consultants, Part 2

Hello again,

Now it’s time for the exciting conclusion to last week’s post on core courses, and how they may help with careers in consulting. I’ll start with the three classes that you can take in either your first or second semester, and finish with the two spring semester courses.

5. Foundations of Finance
This is our core finance course, which gives students an understanding in general of how different aspects of finance work. This includes time value of money, arbitrage, bond pricing, options pricing, and much more. In many of the case interviews I’ve done, I’ve needed to calculate perpetuity value or NPV of an investment, and I would have been completely unable to do that without having taken a finance class.
Interesting follow up courses: Futures and Options, Restructuring

6. Marketing
Clearly, this is our core marketing course. The class relies heavily on in-class discussion of the different facets of marketing, and uses a few handy frameworks (3 Cs, 4 Ps, BCG Matrix) to bring some rigor to the subject. One big bonus of taking this class is that you do in fact learn and use the frameworks, which can be very helpful when doing case interviews. I know I used the 3 Cs a good amount, and two-by-two frameworks like the BCG matrix came up quite a few times. It also helps give you a customer focus that you may not get from other classes, and can help you understand whether the recommendations you are giving will actually create value for customers, which I hear is important.
Interesting follow up courses: Brand Strategy, Competitive Strategy in the Marketplace

7. Competitive Advantage from Operations
This course is focused on giving students an overview of the different aspects of the operations of businesses. We learned everything from inventory management to queueing theory to project management to process diagramming – lots and lots of stuff that management consultants use on a regular basis. Many of the topics we discussed were things that I had actually used and had been exposed to prior to business school when I was a consultant, and having the theoretical understanding to complement the experience I had really rounded out my ability to deal with operational issues with clients.
Interesting follow up courses: Decision Models, Operations in Panama

8. Leadership in Organizations
This class helps students understand many of the interpersonal aspects of working in companies, like how to deal with internal politics, manage change, give feedback, and lead a company through growth. While most other core classes focus on “hard skills” (stats, finance, etc.), this class gives student a chance to work on their soft skills. It’s also a pre-requisite for a number of great courses in management and leadership. As a consultant, many of these skills are what make consultants really strong in the “client service” aspect of consulting. Remember, it’s not all about just doing great analysis – being a consultant is also about how you work with teams, give feedback to your colleagues, understand the organizational dynamics of your clients, and more. This class helps with that side of things.
Interesting follow up courses: Power and Politics in Organizations, Managing Change

9. Global Economy
This class serves as the introduction to macroeconomics that many students look for in business school. The course addresses topics like GDP, aggregate supply and demand, monetary policy, the interplay between interest rates and inflation, and much more. As a consultant,  you will likely serve large multinational and global companies. These firms can be greatly affected by shifts in exchange rates, changing global demographics, and domestic and international monetary policy. Having a solid grasp on these topics will allow you to think on the big picture level for your clients and help them deal with questions that have a far-reaching impact on them.
Interesting follow up courses: Growth in the Developing World, Global Poverty Alleviation

I’ve really enjoyed writing this blog, but this will be my last post, as I have recently graduated. Best of luck to all of the prospective students out there, especially our newest admits who will be starting in the fall.

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Core Courses for Consultants

Hello readers,

So things are wrapping up here at Stern. As I write this, I have less than three weeks until my graduation, which is insane. These two years have been amazing, but they really fly by.

For those of you who have applied this year and will be joining Stern in the fall, first of all, congratulations are in order. I’m going to try to do something I don’t always do with this blog and give actually useful advice.

So you probably all know I’m going back into management consulting after I graduate, so I’ve been preparing for that for the last two years – taking part in the Management Consulting Association (MCA), networking, interviewing, and that often-forgotten part of business school, called “classes.” Prior to business school, I hadn’t really taken business classes, so I wanted to take the full core (minus micro and macro economics, since I had done that in undergrad), but I wanted to also make sure I got to take the classes I wanted that would help me in consulting and beyond. So I’m going to give you a resource that I wish I had before I started. Here’s a list of all of the core courses, and how each one helps for life as a consultant, so you can determine which cores to take and when. This week I’ll go into the four core classes that are only offered during the fall semester. Next week, I’ll focus on the two classes that only take place during the spring, as well as three courses that are offered during either the fall or the spring.

1. Financial Accounting and Reporting

This is one of the two required core classes, so you’ll take this (like it or not) unless you have a CPA, accounting major, or can test out of it. This class isn’t like an undergraduate financial accounting class (I know – I took one back in college). Instead of teaching students how to write journal entries, and essentially training students to be accountants, this class focuses on getting students to understand financial statements in a way that is relevant to a manager. A lot of time is focused on how different financial statements relate and interact with each other, and how a manager should understand what is actually happening in a business based on this information. Why should a soon-to-be-consultant take this course? If you want to fully understand a client to help them, say, become more profitable, you should probably understand how their cost structure works, how their working capital has changed, whether they have cash necessary to take on new projects, etc. A lot of that understanding comes from reading financial statements, and that requires some knowledge of accounting.

Interesting follow up courses: Modeling Financial Statements, Financial Statement Analysis

2. Statistics and Data Analysis

This is the other required core course, so expect to take it. You’ll learn probability through multiple regression, and will learn to analyze real data sets to draw out conclusions. From my experience in consulting, an understanding of statistical methods can really bolster your ability to draw insights out of large data sets. Since getting a solid understanding of statistical analyses, I’ve realized that many of the projects I’ve done in business school, as well as during my internship, benefited from this understanding, and I’ve been able to find better solutions to complex problems by understanding how different factors influence an end result.

Interesting follow up courses: Regression and Multivariate Data Analysis

3. Strategy

This course is probably the easiest to relate to a career in strategy consulting. Core strategy helps you understand the high level choices that firms can make to create and capture value. You’ll learn about how to create firm value, how to evaluate industries, how best to allocate scarce resources, and how to think in ways you probably haven’t had to before. These skills all directly tie to things you’ll actually do as a consultant, so it’s recommended to not skip this one.

Interesting follow up courses: Advanced Strategy – Tools, Managing Growing Companies

4. Firms and Markets

This is the name for our core microeconomics course. The basics of microeconomics focus on the interaction of supply and demand, the different market structures that occur in various industries, and way that firms interact from a game theoretical perspective. These are the forces that drive businesses to behave the way they do, and to make recommendations about what a firm should do, it would be wise to understand the constraints that a firm faces.

Interesting follow up courses: Game Theory, Urban Systems

That’s all for this week, stay tuned for next week’s post on Foundations of Finance, Marketing, Competitive Advantage from Operations, the Global Economy, and Leadership in Organizations.

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The Finances of Studying Finance

Hello all, it’s me again. I’ve been speaking with a few prospects and a few admitted students, and one thing that has come up a lot is the cost of coming to school. New York is an expensive city, tuition costs a lot, and giving up two years of salary is a big deal. Since the federal government has done away with subsidized student loans for graduate students, the cost of borrowing has increased as well.

These are all true, and all important, so I want to talk a little about how to think about the financial burden of business school, and some ways to mitigate it.

Business School is an Investment

The main reason that business school is such a popular destination for young professionals is not just because it’s an awesome time (see my previous posts), but because it’s an investment with a high return on investment (ROI). Most students see a notable increase in earnings after having graduated relative to their earnings before their MBA. For the Stern class of 2012, the average base salary was $107,875, with an average signing bonus of $32,054 and average guaranteed bonus of $27,773, bringing the mean total to $167,702. As you may have guessed, the average incoming student is making markedly less than that prior to entering school.

One additional important thing to factor into this is that the return is not just a financial one. There are also major non-financial benefits, like the education received, leadership skills developed, and the network built over your time at business school. These may certainly contribute to the financial gains from your first job, but they also bring with them the ability to work across a broad variety of roles and industries, the skills and education needed to advance your career at an accelerated pace, and a strong support network that can help you change companies, industries, or functions down the line. All of these should be factored into your decision of whether or not to come to business school.

It Can Be Made Cheaper

Once you choose to attend business school, there are a few things you can do to help lessen the financial burden on yourself when you arrive.

Many Sternies choose to reduce their loan burdens by taking positions on campus. These could be roles as Teaching Fellows, Graduate Fellows, or other positions, but the basics are generally the same. You work for either a professor, a department, or an administrative body (e.g., Admissions, the Office of Career Development, etc.) and the pay you get goes directly to reducing your loan burden. These jobs are generally not taxed, since you’re not actually getting paid – the school is simply reducing your tuition by the amount you earn. So that’s nice. I’ve taken a few of these roles – specifically, I am a Graduate Ambassador for Admissions, a Career Coach for the Office of Career Development, and a Teaching Fellow for Professor Damodaran’s Corporate Finance course and for Professor Purdy’s Team Communications course.

Other students get positions at companies during the year through internships. A major benefit to studying at Stern is that our location in the heart of Downtown Manhattan provides amazing opportunities to get work experience during their time here, while still taking classes, participating in clubs, and having social lives at school. Getting an internship during the spring or fall semester can not only provide students with a supplemental source of income – it can also help them build their network and work experience in whatever field they are looking to recruit.

Lastly, almost every Stern student spends their summer working in a ten to twelve week internship. These internships span nearly every industry, every MBA-friendly functional role, and the entire globe. A vast majority of these positions are paid, and for a few social enterprise-focused positions that aren’t paid, the school can help with funding through a program called SIIF (Stern Impact Internship Fund). This fund provides a stipend to students working in social enterprise so that they can work in an area they are passionate about, and also afford to eat for the summer.

I hope this helps to ease some concerns about the financial impact of attending business school. When I thought about all of this, it became clear to me that my MBA would be well worth my investment, and since I’ve been here, all of the evidence has verified that. However, it may not be the right choice for everyone. So before you take that big step of investing two years and many dollars into your education, do what you should do before any big investment – due diligence. Read up on ROIs for MBAs going into your target industry, calculate the NPV of your MBA (don’t worry if you don’t know what that is – you don’t have your MBA yet), and figure out what you really want to get from this experience.

You can also check out what Stern has to say about financial aid by clicking here.

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Food and Music

Hello all, it’s been quite a long time. I’m sure you all miss me.

I would like to say that I’ve missed a few weeks of this blog because things have been really crazy, but the sad truth is that things are winding down. There’s still plenty to do, and I’m keeping busy, but at this point I have less than two months before I graduate and reenter the real world, so I’m trying to enjoy the little time I have left here.

So enjoyment. That’s the name of the game. Last Thursday was a big day for school-wide enjoyment, which is very convenient. We had two really big events – Passport Day and the B-School Dropouts concert. Oh yeah, Beer Blast was right between the two.

Passport Day is our annual celebration of cultural diversity at Stern. In other words, it is a day to gorge yourself on foods from all over the world. Every country that is represented by a Stern students gets a table, and students either make or order food that is traditional in that country. I wound up having dumplings from Hong Kong; a Guatemalan chicken dish made by a classmate of mine; an Uzbek lamb-stuffed pastry; various arepas, empanadas and croquettes from Latin American countries; and an embarrassing amount more than that. There were also live performances by students and outside performers, generally with traditional dances from a few countries. This year, I got to see performers from South Korea, India and Bulgaria.

Next up was Beer Blast. We have this just about every Thursday from 6PM until 10PM in the Upper Concourse 100 Graduate Lounge. Of course, nobody calls it the Upper Concourse 100 Graduate Lounge. They call it the Beer Blast room. Every week a different student club hosts Beer Blast, which means they get to set the theme, order food, and pick some delicious beer and wine to serve. This week was particularly easy for food selection, because we had ridiculous amounts of food leftover from Passport Day. Other days, we get three deliveries of food throughout the night, and it’s ranged from pizza to sliders to chicken fingers to pita sandwiches to giant trays of ethnic foods from around the world.

After Beer Blast ends at 10PM, there is always some kind of after party (called Bar Blast), generally hosted by the club that ran Beer Blast. This week, instead of the traditional party, our very own B-School Dropouts, a cover band made up of MBA2s, played around the corner at Sullivan Hall. The band covered modern hits, and plenty of classic rock songs, most notably Sweet Child of Mine, which ended the show. After that, there was (yet another) after party at a nearby bar, Amity Hall. Overall, it was a great night, and yet not atypical for a Thursday at Stern.

One other nice thing about Stern is that we don’t hold classes on Fridays. This is really helpful for people who choose to recruit or intern on Fridays, but it’s also just great if you need a little extra time to recover from Thursday night.

Anyway, that’s all for me this week. Stay tuned for more in the coming weeks.

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Last Set of Classes

Hello again, everybody, welcome back. So I’ve talked a lot so far about extracurriculars, recruiting, etc, but one thing I haven’t done to a great degree is talk about my classwork, which is likely relevant to an audience of future grad students. So I’ll go briefly into the six classes I’m taking this semester, as they will be the last six accredited classes I will likely ever take.

Advanced Strategy – Tools, Professor Sonia Marciano
This is the main follow-up class to the core strategy class that almost all MBA1s take. It’s almost entirely filled with MBA2s, many of whom are taking Professor Marciano for the second time. The class uses cases as the basis for discussion, and focuses on the process of strategic analysis and strategic planning. So far, we have gotten deep into industry analyses, resource alignment, global strategies, and competitor analysis. The class has been intellectually challenging and never boring. This class also features some really great guest speakers. Some of our speakers this semester include a Vice President of Content Acquisition at Time Warner Cable, a Deputy Director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Economics, the President of Career Builders International, and a few more.

Competitive Strategy in the Marketplace, Professor John Czepiel
This class is a bit of a hidden gem within the Marketing department. It is designed to be a really practical class that gets students to perform deep strategic analyses and provide tangible, insightful recommendations. The structure of the class is as follows. On the first day of class, students form teams and choose one of 11 cases to analyze for the rest of the class. For the first few weeks, the class is lecture driven, and gets to the main content of the course. Meanwhile, groups are working together to put together a series of recommendations for the client they chose. The clients are frozen in time – all data to be used is from the case that the group chose to work on. Starting in early April, students in groups of five or six begin giving presentations, and for each group that presents, another group has been assigned to basically act as their “bosses” – they know the case, and they’re responsible for asking tough questions of the presentation. Having come from a consulting background, I would say that this course really effectively simulates what it’s like to work on a client project and then present that information to clients. The expectation of rigor is extremely high, and students are held accountable to own their recommendations, like they would on the job.

Business Law for Managers, Professor Richard Hendler
Professor Hendler is as unique and interesting a professor as any I’ve ever had. Each day of class generally starts with an open forum where we can ask whatever legal questions we like. Some things that have come up have been landlord/tenant disputes, foreign speeding tickets, and some other things my classmates have been dealing with. Professor Hendler will use these questions as a way of conveying an interesting legal concept, or even giving general tips. Yesterday, we learned how to be found not guilty of a traffic violation in New York City. I wish I had taken better notes on that. After a little time in this open forum, we learn about some of the big legal issues that managers may face, or that we as individuals could come across in dealing with businesses. The class is really interactive, full of Professor Hendler’s bizarre true stories of situations he’s dealt with, and often features candy and/or pizza.

Conflict, Collaboration and Negotiation, Professor Seth Freeman
I’m a bit late to take this class, as it’s one of the classes that Summer Start students take in advance of the first semester. This is another really interactive, hands-on class where you learn more by doing than any other way. The class is taught as six three-hour blocks for 1.5 credits, and we’ve done at least one negotiation simulation in each class so far. After each negotiation, we debrief as a class and talk about the different strategies we each used to get the outcomes we did, be they better or worse than our classmates.

The Performing Manager, Professor Patricia Bower
Professor Bower is really a performer at heart, and this class is the closest thing I’ve ever taken to an acting class. The class is extremely interactive. How interactive, you ask? Well, we spent a majority of the day on our feet, doing mirroring exercises, moving our bodies around, and actually giving speeches in front of our classmates. If you get anxious about presenting, which many people do, this class provides a great way of breaking out of your shell and learning to feel confident in your presentation skills.

Investment Strategies, Professor Richard Bernstein
This class actually takes place during the second half of the semester, so it has not yet started. Therefore, I really don’t know much about it, other than the course description. So here’s the course description:
“This course is a subjective approach to security analysis. Topics include industry selection, market timing, and interpretation of market history and cycles. Illustrations range from applications of the Dow theory to interest rate analysis to contrary opinion theories. The goal is to blend current market, political, and economic factors in with standard firm financial data to make better investment decisions.”
Sounds cool, right?

So that’s how I’m spending my last 13.5 credits at Stern. I’m doing a mix of strategy, finance, law, and communication classes. This is all made possible by the flexibility of the Stern curriculum. Since I’m not required to specialize in anything, I can get as broad or as narrow an education as I want. I’ve decided to go broad with mine, and I’m thrilled to be learning so much about so many different topics.

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Planning for Pre-View Weekend

Hello again! The semester has picked up a lot this week, and not just in classes. Admissions is getting pretty busy as the third deadline is approaching (only one month left – get on it), and the current students are working with the administration to plan out Pre-View Weekend for admitted students. Word to the wise – if you are admitted, and you can make it to Pre-View Weekend, I highly recommend you do. It’s a great chance to meet your actual future classmates, instead of just guessing based on how awesome they will be based on how awesome my fellow Graduate Ambassadors are. I’ll be in attendance this year for the third year straight, including when I was a prospective student and an MBA1.

It feels like a really long time ago that I was in your shoes, considering whether Stern was the right choice for me. I was fortunate to work with a number of alumni from Stern, as well as from many other top MBA programs, so I had heard a lot of great things about the school from people who had lived through it. Of course, Stern isn’t the only great school out there, so I had heard similarly awesome things from alumni of other schools I was considering. I figured that the best way to decide where I would rather spend my two years and many many dollars would be to get a first-hand experience at each school I had been admitted to, and see which one I clicked with.

Before Stern’s Pre-View Weekend, I attended the admitted student’s day at another school I was considering. I met a lot of really cool people, sat in on a mock lecture that I found really interesting, and heard from some students and alums who had come up with brilliant entrepreneurial ideas, and had turned them into great businesses. All in all the weekend was a success. I came away thinking that I could make a lot of great friends at that school, get a great education, and really enjoy myself. Awesome.

The next weekend I came to Stern for Pre-View Weekend. Just for some context, Pre-View took place over three days, starting with a reception on Friday night, a full day of activities on Saturday, and some programming on Sunday morning. By Friday night, I felt like not only could I make friends here, but I already had. Saturday and Sunday were awesome, and when I finally left at the end, I genuinely felt bad that I had to wait from April to August to actually start. Fortunately, I had enjoyed the weekend so much that by midday Saturday, between hearing from some of the Deans and taking a mock class with Professor Okun, I went onto my phone and paid my deposit.

The next year, I got to participate in Pre-View in a totally new way. Prior to the opening reception for Pre-View, which took place in Times Square at the Nasdaq building, I was extremely lucky to take part in the closing bell ceremony at the Nasdaq, with Dean Peter Henry, a few Stern professors, and Stern administrators. My mother tells me I was briefly on TV, so that’s something. On Saturday, I got to help out with a few programs that were ran for students, and got to meet a few people who I’ve gotten to know as they become MBA1s.

So for anyone who has gotten some good news about Stern already, congratulations, and for anyone who is admitted and has a chance, I hope to see you at Pre-View Weekend in April.

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My Last Long Winter Break

Hello, loyal readers. It’s been quite a while, but I am back to class now for the first time since mid-December. It’s been a crazy few weeks, but here’s the basic breakdown of how I spent my last winter break before my inevitable return to the real world.

December 19 – January 1
Since I’m from New Jersey, I didn’t have to travel around this time to see family or friends, which was really convenient. I spent a lot of this time celebrating the holidays with my family, class mates, friends from high school and college, and other awesome people. Since I had no work hanging over my head, I spent a good amount of time reading, catching up on shows on Netflix, and generally avoiding responsibility. Good times.

January 2 – 5
I spent a few days back at school, helping some of the MBA1s prepare for their interviews, which mostly took place during January. They kept themselves quite busy, researching companies, doing mock interviews, and practicing their behavioral interview questions. I spent the rest of my time preparing for my upcoming trip.

January 6 – 26
The aforementioned trip. As an MBA2, I also get January off from classes, just like the MBA1s do. Unlike most MBA1s, I did not need to spend my January getting ready for and then having interviews. Instead, I, like many of my classmates, took this opportunity to travel around Southeast Asia. A large contingent of Sternies took part in DBi Hong Kong and DBi Singapore, which were two week classes that took place in, you guessed it, Hong Kong and Singapore, respectively. I was not one of those Sternies. Instead, I traveled around Thailand and Indonesia (with a brief trip into Burma/Myanmar) with 6 of my classmates, while running into friends along the way (including fellow bloggers Kristin and Serena).  My trip ran the gamut from luxury hotels in Bangkok to sleeping in a small village in Northern Thailand, to a week in a beautiful villa in Seminyak, Bali. We laughed, we cried (maybe?), we surfed (with varying success), and we became much closer than we had been.

January 28 – February 1
All of us MBA2s came back to Stern for a week of professional responsibility. The program was redesigned this year by renowned moral psychologist and recent addition to the Stern faculty, Jonathan Haidt. He and Professor Bruce Buchanan brought in some great speakers for us, including Charles Ferguson (director of The Inside Job and author of Predator Nation), Walt Pavlo (white collar criminal and MBA graduate), Jacqueline Novogratz (founder of the Acumen Fund and pioneer of social microfinance), Conor Grennan (Stern MBA alumnus, bestselling author of Little Princes and founder of Next Generation Nepal), and Preet Bharara (U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York). In between talks and Q&A sessions with these excellent presenters, we worked through major ethical issues that we could face in the workplace in classes of about 35 students. The real benefit of this class is getting students to understand the underlying social and organizational systems that impact individual behavior, and then working through ways to overcome those systems to do the right thing while inside of them and to change those systems for the better as future business leaders.

February 4 – Today
This was my first week back to real classes, and I’m really excited for the semester. I have a great schedule lined up, and you’ll hopefully be reading all about it as my final semester as a student (it pains me to write that) pushes forward.

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Paying It Forward

Okay, I’m late to post this, I know, I’ve kept you all waiting and that isn’t fair. But I have a good excuse. These last few weeks have been crazy for us MBA2s, in a large part because of all of the programs that we’re taking part in to help out our MBA1 brethren. Since I’m part of the “consulting track,” I have been taking part in two big programs, both which have been keeping me more than busy. Specifically, I’ve been participating in Technical Mock Interviews, as a Career Coach for our Office of Career Development (OCD), as well as volunteering for a program called Pay It Forward.

Technical Mock Interviews are one of the big programs that the OCD Career Coaches take part in during the first semester. Basically, students go through one mock interview through OCD that is generally technical in nature and directly related to the path they intend to follow for their internship. Career Coaches are second year MBA students who are chosen for the role from a large applicant pool based on both their performance in their own interviews and their ability to coach others. The coaches are then trained to give appropriate feedback to students at each step of the coaching process.

For the consulting-focused, technical mock interviews are case interviews, and are meant to simulate what real interviews feel like. The interviews take place in OCD, where many actual first round interviews take place, and students come dressed for the interview and prepared for it to feel just like the real thing. In the interviews I run, I make sure the candidates know that until I say the interview is over, they should treat the mock interview just like they would a real one. This means that students get a good feel for the pressure of a real interview, and the coaches can give feedback based on what they expect interviewers to actually see. When they come in, I introduce myself, give a little of my background, and move right into the interview. When I’ve finished asking behavioral questions and the candidate has worked through the case, I give feedback on the content, delivery, and structure of the candidate’s performance, and provide them with strategies to work on their weaker areas.

While this is an excellent program to help support MBA1s, the Management Consulting Association does not believe that one mock interview is quite enough for students to get to where they need to be. That’s why we put together a program called Pay It Forward, where a larger set of MBA2s give mock cases to MBA1s over the month of December.

This content of the program is similar to the Technical Mock Interviews, but differs in a few key ways. First, we have a broader set of MBA2s involved, all of whom were successful in their own interviews, which means that we have a huge number of cases that first years can take part in. Second, as implied, students can sign up for multiple interviews. In fact, we have had such an amazing turnout by MBA2s who wanted to help that our supply for a while actually exceeded demand. That surprised me, and it may surprise you. Even as MBA1s get really deep into mock interviews in preparation for their real interviews in January, we had so many MBA2s offer so much help that the MBA1s simply could not match that supply.

To me, the big thing this speaks to is the collaborative community that Stern fosters. Most MBA2s don’t actually know most MBA1s yet, mainly because we haven’t taken any classes together yet. Even so, the MBA2s volunteer significant amounts of their time because they want to make sure that everyone at Stern is as prepared as they can be to get internships. Even though I’ve been here for over a year now, it’s this kind of demonstration of selflessness that reminds me why I chose Stern in the first place.