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Master’s Degree

Decision Making Mid-term Results

December 1, 2009

On Monday we received our mid-term papers for the exam we took last week. The answers had been actually posted a few day earlier, so I had general idea where I was standinng.

Nevertheless I was waiting eagerly as I saw some of my solutions to more complicated problems were conceptually correct, but had some glitches in implementation. So I needed to know how much, if any, of a partial credit I would get for those. The result was satisfactory for me. I got 80 points out of 100. Professor mentioned that the mean score was 82. Of course, I always try to shoot for the best, but still it was a good result for me personally.

The stuff we are covering in the course is really interesting. One of the practical things I really appreciate is learning all the cool stuff one can do with the Excel spreadsheets. The built-in formulas are pretty amazing, and I have never used or known many of the quite useful ones, first that come to mind is normal distribution and binomial distribution and their inverses. I can really see how it can be applied to practical issues.

Anyways, the mid-term is done. The final is going to be in class in just two weeks. That is going to be more challenging for sure.

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GMAT Anniversary

November 28, 2009

in GMAT,MBA experience

Today is a one year anniversary of my first attempt on GMAT. To be more precise, it was not on the same date, but the same day- Saturday after Thanksgiving a year ago.

On Friday before the test I knew it was not one of my brightest decisions to schedule the test for that Saturday. Thanksgiving I spent enjoying the day with the family, overloading on turkey and accompanying holiday fare. Needless to say an idea of doing anything for the test preparation did not cross my mind. My original thought was that I would have some time on Friday to do last minute cramming. But Friday was pretty much a day to get back to my normal self. So before the exam I did not do any preparation on Thursday, not much on Friday and Saturday.

On Saturday my exam was in the afternoon. I did some very light review, as every source on preparation for GMAT recommends you to stop cramming for exam on the night before the test (I agree it is a good advice in general), so your brain has time to settle all the facts and be fresh and alert for the test itself. Since I did not want to do real cramming, and there was nothing else I could really do before the test, that time on Saturday was basically lost. It just gave room for building more test anxiety, which is never good. GMAT Preparation -Click Here!

By the time I sat fot the test around 4 PM I was already burned out. At the test I knew I was not doing very well, particularly on the quant part which had been my biggest challenge to begin with.

I did not have a temptation to cancel my score without looking at it. My rationale was that if I paid $250 for the test and even did not do well, I at least wanted it to be learning experience, and I had to know my score to have a proper benchmark. Otherwise the money would be total waste. Also, taking GMAT was one of the testing points to see if I even was cut for the MBA in the first place. I thought, if my score was not acceptable for the part-time MBA program at my target Business Schools, then I would just have to accept the fact that it was not for me. At that point in time, and even much later, I was not yet sure that this MBA route was the right thing for me, given the serious financial and time commitment, and my age. In some way I was looking for a reason why I should not or could not do the MBA.

Using my teenage daughter’s language, the revealed score for my test was epic fail. But regardless what lingo you use it was miserable:

Total score – 550/ 51 percentile
Verbal score – 36/ 78 percentile
Quantitative – 29/ 25 percentile

I considered my verbal score reasonable, but quantitative was killing me.

My first reaction to the score was: “OK, this is what I am worth. I will submit my application with this score (which I did anyways before the start of the test, by selecting the four Business Schools I was planning to apply to), get rejected and put this whole MBA adventure behind me.”

Frankly, even with this score I had a very reasonable chance of acceptance to at least three of the schools I was considering at the time, based on the class profiles of part-time MBA programs.

My full list of target part-time MBA programs was as follows (in the order of my preference at the time):

Smith part-time MBA, University of Maryland (GMAT mid 80% range: 510-690)
McDonough evening MBA, Georgetown University (most selective of the four, GMAT mid 80% range: 620-700)
Professional MBA, George Washington University (GMAT mid 80% range: 480-650)
Kogod part-time MBA, American University (GMAT mid 80% range: 490-610)

The GMAT ranges data are taken from this year’s Businessweek ranking of part-time MBA programs. These scores are very close to what I knew from research about the programs last year. As you see, I was very well qualified for George Washington and American University part-time programs, and my chances for Smith part-time MBA were very reasonable.

Nevertheless, I considered my score a failure, as I was shooting for at least 620, in order to get a shot at Georgetown McDonough School of Business, even though it was my second choice. And even more than effect on my chances of acceptance, that score was a blow to my self-esteem. Based on the practice tests I had taken from various GMAT preparation sources, even with the awareness about my quantitative lacking, I was expecting, and would be consent with the score of at least 620.

This was one of the reasons I decided to take a second attempt on GMAT, after I recuperated from the first failure in a week or so after the test.

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Microeconomics and Impending Finals

October 18, 2009

in MBA experience

For the last few days I have been playing around with the set up and tweaking of my site. I am still learning how to add new pages, posts, how to put them in proper hierarchy, etc. This is the reason why I have not been posting.

I would like to have the site to be functional and visually appealing to the readers and to me. But I just realized that I don’t really have time to learn web design, leave alone programming, to make it a perfect site that I envisioned. For delivering information it is good enough. That’s why I will just start actually posting information about my MBA experience, instead of trying to enhance the site. I’d rather stay current on my business school progress, so that my readers could learn something valuable. As for the design… may be later.

As a matter of fact, there are some noteworthy developments in my studies in just this past week.

Microeconomics

This is one of the two classes I have been taking in the first half-term. The other one is Financial Accounting I. Last Sunday I submitted the problem set that we had been given to work on at home. We were given assignment on September 29th with 12 days to work on it. We were allowed to work in groups.

One of my classmates took initiative to collect contact information and preferred locations, dates and times for group meetings. Those who responded, roughly less than a half of the students in the class, were matched with each other.

I ended up in a group with three other students. We had just one meeting and after that collaborated via email. The meeting itself was about three hours on Monday night. Needless to say that we all were quite confused about the problems we were given. It took us a while just to sort out what the questions were really asking. By the end of the meeting we at least thought that we had an idea about what we were supposed to do.

A big plus was that one of my group mates was entering our conclusions on almost all of the eight questions while we were discussing them. At the end of the meeting he sent us all email with the very raw draft. But it was a good starting point. After that we mostly worked independently, but as we were progressing we were sharing our solutions with other members of the group.

Next day, on Tuesday, we had our regular scheduled Microeconomics class. We showed to our professor what we had done and asked him to just hint us if we were going in the right direction. Professor was very careful not to give us away the solutions by answering our questions. However it was still helpful for us to further refine our understanding of the questions and to understand where to look for the answers.

The questions were related to such fundamental concepts of economics as Demand & Supply, Subsidies and their effect on the markets, costs and competition in the Long and Short run, Competitive markets, Profit Maximization. Of course, it would not be a problem set in Microeconomics if it did not have Opportunity Cost integrated into a couple of questions.

I actually liked a lot working on the problems. As scary as they seemed at the beginning, they were actually quite interesting. One problem in particular required quite a bit of understanding and calculations involving Marginal Revenue, Marginal Cost, inverse Demand function. One of the group members solved the problem and even got a hint from professor via email that she was right on. I recognize that for my solutions it was invaluable help. Thanks to study groups and benevolent classmates!!

This past Thursday we had our grades on the Problem Set. I got 35 out of 40 possible points. It turned out to be above the median and probably in B+/A- zone. I am actually quite satisfied with the result. Especially because the 60% of the grade for the class is comprised of the grades for this Problem Set, a quiz we had a few weeks earlier, and class participation.

The Final on Microeconomics is this Tuesday. I am a bit nervous as this is going to be my first exam for the course in the business school. What I am not nervous, but utterly panicked about is the final on Financial Accounting I, which is going to be this Wednesday. I already bombed the quiz last Wednesday. Now I am hectically preparing for the Fin. Accounting. That’s why I will have to stop typing for this post and get back to working on my financial problems.

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Intro to My Blog

October 15, 2009

in GWU School of Business,MBA experience

I am a part-time MBA student at George Washington University School of Business in Washington, DC. I am on schedule to graduate with my MBA degree in May 2012, so I still have a lot to share about in my remaining time in the business school.
In my blog I am writing about my experience of going through the MBA program as a part-time student, full-time employee, full-time husband and father. I hope my experience will be helpful to others who are considering taking on this endeavor or already going through the part-time or even full-time MBA for that matter.

There is a lot of information about MBA programs, schools, courses etc. on formal, official, semi-official sites of all kinds pertinent to ‘everything MBA’. There are also a lot of blogs from current and former students. I hope my blog will add some valuable insights to this wealth of information.

I am trying to keep up to date on my journey through the program. Maybe for some readers my insights will serve as deterrent, but I think that for most of the MBA aspirants and students it will serve as encouragement and motivation.

I noticed some visitors to my blog have been searching the site for my email. If you are too shy to leave a message in the comments, shoot me an email to webmaster at parttimembadegree.com

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