Fifteen

Before the first years faint in fear at the notion of Core II, relax, there is no official Core II, just a series of classes that many Sloanies feel are necessary to earn the MBA badge of honor. Yes, after the official Core, you can take pottery throwing classes, urbane urban labor theory classes…or even *gasp!* a class on main campus underneath the infinite corridor with overeager undergraduates who will pummel you with their truly earned brass rat rings and uncanny ability to stay up all night and do problem sets while you are at the BHP pounding PBRs (Pabst Blue Ribbon for the uninitiated) after which you pass out on your friend’s couch in Beacon Hill.

December is always a time to reflect, pre-New Years when you make all those crazy resolutions that get thrown out the window during your IAP travels or interview grind. So here is a recap of key take-aways from Core.

15.010 Economic Analysis for Business Decisions:  Transfer pricing guru and TA Roy Ben-Ami is waiting to bring the swift, cold hand of the Department of Justice and send an unsuspecting first year to white collar “pound-me-in-the-a**-prison for their oligopoly, collusion, price fixing, cartel-like behavior in their General Electric and Westinghouse Turbine memo.

15.280 Communications:  TA Heather Pichette will give you a check plus if you can write a bullet point, size 11 point, 1 ½ space, Times New Roman memo on why your investment banking job shouldn’t be shipped off to Bangalore. Oh wait, are there any ibanking jobs left on this continent? Let’s not forget Comm Lab which is a chance for you to rant, cry, hug and throw things at your Core team. Remember, this is a safe place to express your feelings says Zen Comm Lab TA Harpreet Singh. Try doing that in the real-working world and see what your bonus is for being a Team Player.

15.515 Financing Accounting: Is non-Google profit-generating Internet advertising dead? Apparently not, in the Double Click case. Just get backing by private equity and strategic consulting power house TA Matthias Sander.  Solution: (1) Go IPO, private equity backers cash out and load up the company with 10x leverage as a special gift to public shareholders; (2) Dilute the mom-n-pop investors with a follow-on offering less than three months later; (3) Split the stock three months afterwards in an effort to bump up the market cap (read: irrational investor psychology); (4) Simultaneously issue Convertible Debt with some nasty dilutive warrants; (5) Split the stock again nine months later as a Christmas present for shareholders; (6) Issue some more equity; (7) Repurchase debt at a major discount screwing bondholders; (8) and finally buy some Treasury stock to send an über-confident signal to the market about your company’s future prospects. 

15.401 Finance Theory: The Acid Rain case must have placed Clean Tech / Green Lovin’ Sloanies between a rock and a hard place! What?! Installing pollution-preventing scrubbers might not be ‘economically competitive’? This is for Mr. Green himself, Ted Carstensen, (I worked for The-GE-Man-this-summer) and other Sloanies who worked in the “green initiatives” divisions at multinational oil companies, you know who you are! C’mon if there wasn’t an expected NPV value on these clean tech projects, GE would be burning coal, baby!

For those first years who want to further their Andy-Lo-centric finance education, check out 15. 434 Advanced Corporate Finance. How to model the terminal value of terminally-ill public auto companies? Is there a macro-function in Excel for “Show me my bailout money!” or “Help! A hedge fund is shorting the hell out of my stock!”

15.311 Organizational Processes: Enough jokes about the three lens framework, you might need to break the political lens into a shard sharp enough to stab your consulting colleagues in the back in order to climb up the brutally competitive professional ladder in strategic consulting. 10,000 Associate Consultants, and what, like, a 100 Partners? You do the turnover math. No fear, Management Consulting Club Leader and OP TA Grete Rød will teach you how to look sharp on your coffee chat interviews (let’s be honest, they are interviews disguised under the veil of caffeine).

15.060 Data, Models & Decisions: You don’t need a crystal ball to realize that we are in the worst economic downturn in our lives. At least it’s not the Great Depression…yet, (Suggestion to Obama Economic Advisors: out-of-work-bankers and hedge fund managers could repair roads under a New-New Deal). For your Ontario Gateway Case make sure that one of your insurance schemes did not hedge risk with a credit default swap from AIG. In that case, your plane is going down.

15.810 Marketing Management: Forget the razor and razor blade model, say hello to the new Brita Filter Razor Blade model wrapped in the marketing message of purity and crisp, clean taste, even if New York City’s tap water is pumped straight from the from heart of the Dirty Dancing Catskills. Just picture TA Indy Sen as Patrick Swayze and you can be the pre-nose job Jennifer Grey.

15.389 Global Lab: The Ultimate Consulting Location. Forget being stuck in Paris, Texas for a 6 month boondoggle or in god-forsaken middle of nowhere America where the only restaurant is Arby’s and as the strategy consultant staying at the local Best Western you look like a damn Yankee in your starched khakis and fleece vest. Welcome to GLab! Hello, exotic warm destination with plenty of “research trips” to tropical beaches and vibrant nightlife.

Ok, kiddos. That’s all the advice I can give you for now. Just remember what everyone says about business school, “It’s the best two years of your post-21 year old lives” so if you are not enjoying your time at MIT Sloan thus far, you are doing too much work and not enough having fun…or eating enough pork knuckle (see adjoining picture). View your student loan as a working capital revolver that should be drawn down for fun/travel/party expenses now because you ain’t gettin’ another post-MIT Sloan loan anytime in the near future. Welcome to the credit crunch.