Posts tagged as:

Professional MBA

Part-time MBA Blog – One Year Anniversary

October 15, 2010

Yes, you read it right. It was one year ago exactly when I embarked on this journey of keeping the record of my progress in part-time MBA program at George Washington University in Washington, DC. The year was eventful both in my business school studies and on the blog itself. Now I can look back and [...]

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Case Study of SG Cowen: New Recruits – Business Case Studies Update

October 12, 2010

Just a short note on the update I made to Business School Cases section of my blog. It seems with the school year moving forward at full speed my blog has been getting more visits from inquiries related to business case studies. Judging by the number of hits from those inquiries I gather that SG [...]

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Appreciative Inquiry in Management Consulting

October 10, 2010

This week in my Consultative Processes class we had a guest speaker from management consulting company which utilizes an approach not so common in management consulting business and organizational improvement in general. This approach is called Appreciative Inquiry. Basically, the difference between the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) and traditional approach is that AI focuses on the [...]

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Consultative Processes – Group Project Progress

October 3, 2010

Updated September 24, 2011. I placed an introduction and background & understanding sections of the Consulting Proposal Letter to Kacey Fine Furniture in the Business School Cases of this blog. In my Consultative Processes class at GW part-time MBA program we are going to complete two group projects: Writing and Presenting Proposal and Writing and [...]

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MBA Business Cases

September 17, 2010

I have started a new section on my blog, Business School Cases, where I am going to post either drafts of my contribution to the group papers (since I don’t have the exclusive rights to those final documents) or final versions of my business case assignments where I was the sole author. These papers are intended [...]

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Group Projects Lamentations – Not Only MBA

September 15, 2010

“I hate group projects. They send you paper at 10.30 PM and expect you to be able to do something with it.”  This is not from me. This is a quote from my daughter, who is at high school, last night around midnight. Apparently she was tasked with tying down, formatting and editing the individual [...]

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Financial Markets – Let the Fun Begin

September 13, 2010

Last week I eventually received my textbook for Financial Markets class. I already mentioned this book before: Financial Management: Theory & Practice So I spend my whole weekend reading assigned passages, including the ones for the last class as I did not have the book in time for it. The book is not overly complicated [...]

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Consulting Panel, Consulting Interview Hints

September 9, 2010
consultants

Wednesday class in Consultative Processes was very interesting. First we had a panel of four consultants currently working for some of the very well known and not so widely known consulting companies: Pricewaterhouse Cooper (PWC), Deloitte, North Highland, Grant Thornton. In spite of the fact that the image of a consultant sometimes is more readily associated [...]

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The McKinsey Mind Quotes

September 7, 2010

I am almost done with the book – The McKinsey Mind. It has been a quite enlightening read and made me think about how my present company measures on the scale. We could use quite a few ideas to improve some of our processes, I will leave it at that. But it’s not a discouragement. [...]

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McKinsey Mind – Lessons from McKinsey & Co

September 3, 2010

I mentioned before that McKinsey Mind is the required text for my Consultative Processes course. I started to read it after the first class and I cannot get my hands off of it. I am half way through now. I plan to read it twice, as was suggested by the authors. One time – straight [...]

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Consultative Processes – Intro to Consulting Business

September 1, 2010

Today I had the first class in my elective course – Consultative Processes. From the syllabus and the first class it became obvious that the class is going to be very writing-intensive and group work oriented. We will have to submit three individually prepared cases from Harvard Business Publications. And there will be two group [...]

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Financial Markets – First Class of the Fall Term

August 31, 2010

Today I had my first class in the Fall term – Financial Markets. It was rather interesting and at times even entertaining. Professor had eventually placed syllabus with required textbook earlier today and I was able to order it from Amazon. The book we are using in class is Financial Management: Theory & Practice 13 [...]

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Second Year Part-time MBA Begins

August 30, 2010

Today is the first day of classes at the University and official start of my second year of studies in GWU part-time MBA program. My classes however haven’t started yet. I have my first class on Tuesday. For the first module of the Fall term I have signed up for two classes: Financial Markets and [...]

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First Year Part-time MBA Closure

July 24, 2010

Have not been posting for almost a month. Now I am kind of have been missing blogging and ready to post some updates. The two main reasons for my extended silence are the preparation for the professional certification exam that I took in two weeks after the end of the summer module, and the family vacation [...]

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First Year Part-time MBA Is Complete

June 29, 2010

I know, I know, I already reported it once, almost two months ago, that my first year of part-time MBA was over. But it was according to the business school’s schedule, not my personal. If I did not take take classes in the first summer term module, then it would indeed be the end. But [...]

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Summer Term MBA Classes are Near to Close

June 18, 2010

Have not been able to post lately due to the overwhelming amount of work in business school. As much as I prefer qualititative over the quantitative classes, in terms of time it is not really easier. In quants it takes me a lot of time to comprehend the concepts and their application. In qualititative classes [...]

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Nature of Markets – Introduction to Marketing

May 20, 2010

Tonight I had my second class that I am taking in this Summer Term at part-time MBA program at GWSB. I have been looking forward to this course and it seems that my high expectations will be met in this class. I have long been interested in marketing and I really expect to learn a [...]

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Human Capital Management – Efficiency and Monetary Motivation

May 7, 2010

In our Human Capital Management class professor showed us a great video from TED.com featuring Dan Pink’s presentation on relationship between different motivational factors  and human creativity and efficiency in solving problems.  Needless to say, Dan Pink is a very entertaining speaker. I enjoyed his talking very much. But even more fascinating for me was the [...]

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MBA Exam Human Capital Management – Mimicking Law School

May 4, 2010

A week ago on Wednesday I encountered a somewhat new format for the final exam in my MBA pursuit. Usually, if it was not multiple choice, the exams  had a requirement to write a short answer.  If it was  a longer narrative required, then it was usually done through the final research paper or a case write up done [...]

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Entrepreneur Interview – Lessons for MBA Student

April 25, 2010

One of our assignments in Entrepreneurship class at GWSB MBA program was to conduct an interview with an entrepreneur of our choice. This was an individual project, so we had to find a worthy candidate on our own and to interview him/her. To make it easier, we were even given a set of questions which could be [...]

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Lessons from Elevator Pitch Presentations

April 23, 2010

I already had a post about the making of the Elevator Pitch by our team in Entrepreneurship class. But I wanted to give a bit broader review of that particular class and talk in general terms about the cases that were presented by various groups. I really found that exercise quite stimulating. It also provided the opportunity [...]

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Human Capital Management – Indirect Compensation Gone Wild

April 21, 2010

In one of our classes on Human Capital Management we were discussing employees’ compensation. Obviously, among other things we were touching on all hot topics related to the issue: executive compensation, fair pay, incentives, indirect compensation, etc. Our professor gave us an in-class exercise: we had to get into four groups and come up with as [...]

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Data Analysis Mid-Term Exam

April 5, 2010

Nothing too exciting happenned at the exam. The format was open book, open notes. Needless to say that even with this format I felt a brain-freeze, as oftentimes the case in my quantitative classes. Will see how I fared on the forced grading curve. The stuff covered in the exam was all the material we have [...]

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Human Capital Management Case Study

March 31, 2010

12/31/2011 I have uploaded brief analyses for all case studies I had in my Human Resource Management course at my MBA program at GWSB:  Nordstrom: Dissension in the Ranks?  SG Cowen:New Recruits, Citibank: Performance Evaluation Case Analysis, Harrah’s Entertainment: Rewarding Our People Case Study. Have not had enough time to post lately as I have [...]

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Group Projects in MBA Learning Experience

March 27, 2010

If you followed this blog for a bit, you might have noticed that I have been participating in group projects in some of my classes since the beginning of  my part-time MBA program. So far, I have co-authored two group research papers (Business Ethics and Global Perspectives) and have been doing group assignments in Managerial Accounting [...]

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Creative Entrepreneurship in MBA Program

March 23, 2010

There was another blast class in Entrepreneurship this week. From the two first classes it seems that the main purpose of our instructor in this class is to evoke our creativity and show us how indispensable it is for those of us who aspire to venture on our own or join a start-up after getting [...]

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Spring Term Module 1 Grades In

March 22, 2010

On Monday I finally got my grades for Global Perspectives. The Managerial Accounting grade came within a couple of days after the final exam. I waited to get both grades before posting on that. Both grades came as a surprise to me: a pleasant one and somewhat disappointing, even though I got straight B’s in both classes. [...]

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Laptops Banned from Universities Classrooms

March 14, 2010

Don’t panic, they are not outlawed yet. But the trend is there. In my MBA experience at GWU School of Business I have encountered different policies by different professors on the use of laptops in the classroom. There were two classes (Financial Accounting-1, Judgement and Uncertainty) where the use of the laptop was highly desirable, even though not [...]

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Entrepreneur Is a Verb – Unorthodox MBA Notion

March 9, 2010
Two Dice

Tuesday class in Entrepreneurship was a blast. Professor has been teaching it since mid-seventies, so he can afford to be unorthodox. There were quite a few ideas he introduced in the class that would probably not fly if he was a younger member of the faculty. But this is a charm of having a seasoned educator, [...]

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Celebrating End of First Module of Spring Term at GWSB Professional MBA

March 7, 2010

It just happenned that way that both our kids had sleepover arrangements out of house on Saturday night. Not a very common occasion in our family. So I decided to make some fringe benefits from this coincidence: to have a night out with my wife. Regular a la carte menu for such occasions for us (not that we [...]

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Global Perspectives Final Exam – Done

March 6, 2010

Yesterday I had my last final exam in module one of the Spring Term at GWSB – Global Perspectives. Overall exam was not very difficult, especially given its open book, notes, internet access format. There was only one question I somehow had missed during the course regarding “foreignness liability”. Thanks to internet access I was [...]

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Managerial Accounting Final Exam-Done!

March 4, 2010

I had a major blunder with my final on Managerial Accounting. I knew in advance that the case for exam will be posted on Blackboard a day before. But with all this cramming for the exam proper it absolutely evaded my mind. It was like a blind spot. I felt pretty good before the final [...]

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Managerial Accounting Study Group – Prepping for Final Exam

February 27, 2010

Today we had our study group to review and discuss example exam for Managerial Accounting. We were in the meeting for almost 4 hours. First we went very briefly over all the cases we had prepared during the course. This review was very cursory, just to highlight the underlying concepts. We did not delve into actual [...]

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Managerial Accounting Final Exam Cramming

February 26, 2010
man in anxiety

Today I looked for the first time at the example final exam in the course pack. It really got me anxious. I got the same “numbers anxiety” I had before both of my Financial Accounting exams in the Fall term. All the concepts that are covered in the exam are pretty much familiar and related [...]

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GWSB MBA Spring Term Module 1 Classes Are Over

February 25, 2010

Today was the last day of classes in the first module of the Spring Term for me. Next week we have finals. For me it is Global Perspectives and Managerial Accounting. I have a false sense of confidence about Global Perspectives, mainly because it’s an open notes, books, everything exam. As for Managerial Accounting – [...]

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