I would like to start by saying that I have been enjoying my MBA experience so far. It has been challenging, but this is exactly what I like about it. If you try to keep status quo in your life and career, you inevitably slide back and loose the ground. I want to move forward, and MBA program has been very rewarding and helpful in this regard. Not without its tradeoffs, of course.
Tonight I took my final on Financial Accounting I. It was a two and a half hours open book exam, so we could use a textbook, all our records, all handouts given during the course by professor. The exam contained five sections. Total possible 100 points.
First section was multiple choice questions. Total of 20 questions, one point for each question. I answered at least 15 questions without any reservations. One question I did not have any idea about, and others could go either way.
In section two we had to fill in the blanks in the Balance Sheet statement. That was probably the easiest part of the exam.
The third section was on analysis of Financial Statements. The questions were about calculating Return on Assets, Return on Shareholders’ Equity, and Accounts Receivables Turnover based on the statements of three companies: Washington Post, New York Times, Gannet (publisher of USA Today, I believe). I did not have any trouble with those, as this is a fun part of Financial Accounting in my opinion.
In the fourth section we had to determine the flow of inventory, accounts receivables, and some other account based on provided income statement and cash flow statement. That took me a bit to figure out that it’s just simple algebra equation and to solve for x. I think I got it right.
The fifth section was to produce the Income Statement, the Balance Sheet Statement, and, naturally, to do indirect method for Cash Flow statement. Needless to say, I had to skip the indirect method altogether, as I knew I did not have enough time to kill myself over it at the expense of the other two statements.. With those at least I had some confidence I knew what needed to be done. Even with that, my Balance Sheet did not balance at the end. Apparently I made a mistake somewhere in the Income Statement. After exam there was a group of about six people outside the auditorium debriefing the exam. It turned out no one of us managed to balance the Balance Sheet.
If I didn’t bomb the quiz I would be pretty comfortable now that I got a reasonable grade for Financial Accounting, given my non-quant nature. Now I just hope that I have a passing grade to continue with this whole MBA experience.
At any rate, I am done with my first half term exams. The second half term starts already on Monday. I have just four days to relax before the new wave of studying and cramming. I will make sure to watch at least one movie on CD or TV in the meanwhile, as I had not had this ‘luxury’ since the beginning of the fall semester.
In these four days I will also try to update the blog with notes on my MBA preparation experience. Hopefully I will be able to give some valuable insight for those who are in the preparation process at the time or about to embark on this exciting and rewarding adventure.
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