Wharton Winter Welcome
February 4, 2010 – 1:24 pmLast week was awesome! There were quite a few events that would go down in history as key events of 2010.
Wharton Winter Welcome: the newly admitted Wharton students roamed around the campus in great numbers (they were easily identifiable by the tell-tale easy-to-read name badge on a bright red lanyard). What’s nice is that the caliber of the newly admitted students is at a consistent high level: I got to meet absolutely outlandish new admits.
Winter Welcome activities range from class visits, conversations with professors, school presentations and tours around town to dinners with students in fancy restaurants in Center City, all paid for by the school.
The Lauder Institute had a special reception for its admits in the Lauder Lounge. Unfortunately, I only got to see how the catering service were setting up the very exquisite menu on the tables. I had to rush to the Irvine Auditorium to hear Malcolm Gladwell – the best-selling author of The Outliers, The Tipping Point, Blink, etc. – speak, and missed the food and wine at the Lauder Lounge this year.
Such is Wharton: time management is of utmost importance, and prioritizing becomes one’s second nature. I figured that I would get to know the new Lauder class when they start classes in May, but Malcolm Gladwell’s speech was maybe a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
The Winter Welcome event this year did not coincide with Wharton Follies, though: somewhat a disappointment for some people, but one should look at the bright side as coming to see the Follies is another great reason and excuse to visit campus again on February 18th.
Here’s a teaser for this year’s Follies:
Good luck, Abby Sunderland!
January 25, 2010 – 7:26 pmCheck out the blog by Abby Sunderland: I am amazed that she at the age of 16 is braving the big seas around the world alone!
Good luck, Abby!
Prof. Diamond’s Negotiations Class at Wharton
January 15, 2010 – 4:53 pmI was lucky to have gotten Prof. Diamond’s Negotiation class this semester, and today was the first class. I had heard the class was good, but I would have never guessed just HOW good the class is.
Prof. Stuart Diamond is a legendary professor at Wharton, and his expertise and fame are spread far beyond the confines of Huntsman Hall. Here’s an excerpt from his bio available on the course website (oh yes – there is a dedicated website for the course: www.winwitheveryone.com):
“Stuart Diamond has taught and advised on negotiation and cultural diversity to corporate and government leaders in more than 40 countries, including in Eastern Europe, former Soviet Republics, China, Latin America, the Middle East, Canada, South Africa and the United States. He holds an M.B.A. with honors from Wharton Business School, ranked #1 globally by The Financial Times where he is currently a professor from practice. For more than 90% of the semesters over the past 13 years his negotiation course has been the most popular in the school based on the course auction, and he has won multiple teaching awards. He has taught negotiation at Harvard Law School, from which he holds a law degree and is a former Associate Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project. He has directed a negotiation consulting firm in Cambridge, MA.”
He runs his own consulting shop called Global Strategy Group, runs a host of companies including an aviation business, and in his other careers he has won the Pulitzer Prize, written books and made documentaries, traded futures in New York, practiced law, founded successful start-ups, and worked in investment banking. In a word, he is amazing!
The class today was based on a case called Rating Wars, where two TV broadcast companies have to decide on what content to show with the goal of maximizing profits. The class was organized into teams of threes and fours, each team on both sides was then assigned a role – either one broadcast company or the other – and assigned an opponent team. The lecture room was divided by a makeshift curtain so that the companies could not see each other (as it would happen in real life):
Prof. Diamond starts the Negotiation course in January 2010.
We then used the information on payouts supplied with the case itself to make decisions on what programming we would choose and anticipate how our opponents would react to that choice. There was a lot of game theory involved, so I was able to use the knowledge from the Managerial Economics course with Prof. Weigelt who is by the way a renown game theorist.
We were also able to negotiate with our opponents on the issue of choice of programming both “companies” should take. I should not disclose the exact outcome of our exercise as doing so could potentially diminish the effect of the exercise for future students, but I will note that my amazing team did as well as a team could possibly do in this exercise!
It is courses like this, and people like Prof. Diamond and my team that practically every day make me think how wonderful a school is Wharton!
Second Year Drinks tradition at Wharton
January 15, 2010 – 12:49 amWharton has a number of wonderful traditions. I will try to cover some of them here.
Wharton Second Year Drinks is an informal event for second-year MBA’s – it is another opportunity to meet friends and meet new people: the school’s size leaves an opportunity to meet someone new virtually every day.
The gathering takes place at various bars around town, usually in Center City, every Wednesday at 9 pm. There is a student run organizing committee (everything at Wharton is student run), and these wonderful people do a great job at securing a place for the SY Drinks and spreading the word around. It is a popular event.
On Thursday mornings, it is not unusual to read Facebook updates from my fellow classmates mentioning hangovers, plans to limit alcohol consumption, start working out more, etc. Comes Wednesday again, and everyone is at Second Year Drinks as usual 
.
Parties in the fall
January 10, 2010 – 2:40 amThe third semester was extremely busy. In 2008, when the program started, I heard some people say that it gets less busy in the second year, and the further you, go the less there is to do. None of this is true.
What happens is you get more efficient at managing time, handling multiple tasks at hand, and you have a broader tool set to tackle the problems. Since you get so much better at managing all the work, there is suddenly more time for other things, and so eventually these ‘other things’ creep into your schedule and you end up very busy. However, since the second year at Wharton is all electives, the academic experience is more enjoyable than the first year.
Enough about academics. The fall semester at Wharton is the time for several traditional parties. Everything starts with the Canada Club’s Red party. Then there is the Foam Party (dancing at the Shampoo club), the White Party (everyone dresses in white), the Walnut Walk (ridiculously funny: the whole school puts on underwear and a formal top, and hits the bars on Walnut street in this shape and form). In November, Wharton Follies traditionally organize the Toga Party (participants are supposed to wear togas), but this year it was somewhat of a disaster. One event that seems to always be immensely popular with Wharton MBA’s is the Winter Ball – it is expensive ($80 per person), but very fun, and unlike the Toga Party, the event sold out this year. And of course, there is Pub every Thursday, and Second Year Drinks every Wednesday.
On top of that, there are Cohort events: my cohort went out for Karaoke, and we also got together for a huge Christmas party. Plus, there are dinners with friends and lunches with professors (Wharton has this awesome program where the school subsidizes lunches with professors if they agree to meet for lunch with students).
Clubs have their own traditional events, e.g. Greater China Club organizes a dinner for the Mid-Autumn Festival, and the RuMBA (Russian-speaking MBA’s) division of the Europa Club throws a traditional potluck mid-November. The Wine club meets regularly for a lot of wine and cheese… the list is endless.
Lauder has two traditional events in the fall: Day On the Beach (we spend a weekend in the beginning of the semester on Jersey shore not far from Atlantic City) and the Secret Santa celebration in December.
This school is a fun place that provides tons of opportunities for socializing. We work very hard, and we party just as hard after the work is done.
It was a great semester
January 9, 2010 – 4:09 amThis past semester was super. I loved every course I took – all of my professors exceeded my expectations and I learned a lot of new skills and knowledge. On the other hand, I had more time to enjoy the social life at Wharton and Lauder. The magic sum of superb academic program with equally satisfying extracurriculars was what made the past semester such a great experience! Today, I will focus on the academic component.
First off, I took three Finance courses: Advanced Corporate Finance with Prof. Bilge Yilmaz, Corporate Valuation with Prof. Oded Sarig and Prof. Simon Benninga and International Banking with Prof. Richard Herring.
Advanced Corporate Finance with Prof. Yilmaz was thorough, detailed and hands-on. It was a mixture of lectures and cases, and there was a lot of team work involved. The learning curve in this course is quite steep, and I spent a great deal of time on the subject. The prof is good, and he truly enjoys his work, which ultimately makes a good course great.
Corporate Valuation was an absolute blast. This particular course is taught by two awesome professors who each take half-semester shifts. I must admit that some students prefer one prof over the other, but I personally equally enjoyed both styles. Prof. Benninga’s dry humor and as-a-matter-of-fact delivery style fits well with the content of the course that he teaches, whereas Prof. Sarig’s high-energy classes and his enthusiastic personality are well suited for the second half of the semester when students tend to get overwhelmed with all the things on their calendars. I learned a million of new things during the semester, thanks to the great professors and an awesome learning team: I was lucky to be on a team with two amazing individuals: one – a former lawyer, the other – a Bain consultant (thanks, team!). Together we cranked out some great quality work.
Prof. Herring’s class was an eye opener on the issues in International Banking. The course is well-structured, well-paced and very insightful. The ability of the professor to organize discussions, his wealth of knowledge and stories based on regular personal interactions with the key people in the banking sector both in the US and internationally add to the overall high quality of the class. Again, I was lucky to be on a team with amazing people (most of them either have, are or will work for Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and CitiBank). Interesting detail: Prof. Herring used to be the Director of the Lauder Institute.
At Lauder, my Global Knowledge Lab team worked hard to finish our deliverable for our project on Green Buildings where we focused on creating a business plan for a global consulting firm focused on energy efficient real estate. And to think of it – how many opportunities in life does one have to write a business plan for a global consulting firm! Our team has benefitted the guidance from Wharton’s Prof. Amir Goldman of Susquehanna Capital and a Wharton alum Dr. Scott Snyder who runs his own consulting shop. GKL is a subject for an individual blog post, but overall, I think it is promising to be an extremely valuable part of Lauder experience.
As an Omnicom Fellow, I had the opportunity to work as a Teacher Assistant at Wharton, and I TA’d two half semester classes at the MBA level, and taught a 6-week seminar for the undergrads. This was a rewarding and exciting experience. I also got to meet Omnicom’s CFO, Mr. Randy Weisenburger.
All Lauder students are required to take two electives at the School of Arts and Sciences to graduate. I took an Advanced Business Chinese with Prof. Chiang. A delightful course for any serious language learner! This was a great addition to the Lauder’s superb Chinese language program. I should mention that I have taken the OPI again, and confirmed the fact that my language skills are at the level required for graduation so I will not have to do any of that testing this semester anymore.
Tomorrow, I will write a few words about the major social and extracurricular activities I was involved in.
Lauder Distinguished Lecture Series – a recent innovation at Wharton/Lauder
December 1, 2009 – 11:44 pmThe Lauder Institute is constantly on the forefront of innovation in education. In spring 2009, Prof. Mauro Guillen organized a hugely successful Wharton course on the recent crisis: the idea was to invite several professors from different departments to lecture on an issue that is related to the meltdown. It worked well, and Wharton has offered this course again in the fall.
This year the Lauder Institute has initiated yet another cool project called Lauder Distinguished Lecture Series. The series started last month with a wonderful presentation by Managing Director of Human Capital Management at Goldman Sachs. There was a wine-and-cheese reception afterwards, where students could meet the speaker personally. The conversations ranged from banking to corporate life style to career advice. It was a great night.
Today I was pleasantly surprised when I received an email from Prof. Guillen announcing four more speakers that will participate in the Series next semester. All of them are very accomplished people, and the topics they will talk about have for the most part been identified. Here is an excerpt from the email:
1. Michael Silverstein
Senior Partner and Managing Director, The Boston Consulting Group.
Will speak about his recent book, Women Want More: How to Capture Your Share of the World’s Largest, Fastest-Growing Market.
2. Martin Werner
Partner, and Mexico Office Head
Goldman Sachs
Former Deputy Finance Minister of Mexico
Will speak about emerging economies.
3. Joanna Barsh
Senior Partner，McKinsey &Co.
Will speak about her recent book How Remarkable Women Lead: The Breakthrough Model for Work and Life.
4. Allan Kwan
Venture Partner，Oak Investment Partners
Member of the Lauder Advisory Council
To me, this is an impressive beginning of what could potentially be another awesome tradition at Lauder! Needless to say, all the events are already on my iCal, prioritized as very important and synched to the iPhone.
Summer internships in the downturn: Wharton/Lauder advantage
November 14, 2009 – 7:08 pmSummer internship search is never easy, but it was especially tough to be hunting for a summer job in the midst of the worst recession of the century.
Fortunately, for those b-school applicants who are wondering if it is worth paying extra for the joint degree from Lauder, I have a lot of good (although arguably subjective) news. In my subjective view, the Lauder Institute does give its students extra coaching resources and practical leads to summer employment around the world, and I am a prime example of this.
Last May, in the midst of the global recession, ubiquitous cost-cutting, layoffs, pay cuts and a general situation where companies see little to no sense in hiring interns (what I call “corporate summer intern allergy”), I had two offers for competitively paid internships – both of them through Lauder network.
While Lauder students have access to all the resources at Wharton, there are additional Lauder-specific resources:
1. Summer immersion contacts
a) Corporate visits
During the Lauder summer immersion that takes place prior to Wharton core classes start in the first year, Lauderites have the unique opportunity to communicate face-to-face with senior executives of a whole array of companies. In the case of Chinese track 2010, we decided to visit a dozen companies: consulting, manufacturing, luxury retail, education services, private equity firms, banks, main-stream media, high-tech, Internet services. We visited world-known companies who are at the forefront of what they are doing, e.g. Philips, McKinsey, Baidu, Caijing Magazine, EF, etc.
b) Wharton and Wharton/Lauder Alumni and second-year students
It just so happens that wherever you go there are alumni from both Wharton and Wharton/Lauder many of whom understand the challenges you face and are actively involved in the Wharton community. Dialogue is often very informal and friendships are made at a party, dinner or over a pint of beer in a bar after work.
2. Global Knowledge Lab (GKL)
I have already blogged about this innovation at Lauder several months ago, but I have not mentioned that GKL is yet another opportunity to get contacts with companies you may be interested to work for. At least one Chinese track student worked at a GKL partner company this summer in China. I myself had a chance to work in the Middle East for a GKL partner company.
3. Estee Lauder Co.
Estee Lauder hires at least one marketing intern for its New York HQ every summer from the Lauder Institute: it is a highly competitive internship opportunity, and they are quite selective in who they interview, but it is a super cool and unique opportunity for those interested in luxury retail and marketing.
4. Alumni Grape Vine
Many Lauder alumni in hiring positions often require their hires to have the specific skill set they once acquired while at school themselves. The logical solution is to source this talent where it is abundant – Lauder. As a consequence, there was a considerable number of summer internship positions that our alumni looked to fill with Lauder students. I want to send special thanks to the board and the management of the Lauder Institute for having gone out of their way last spring to tap into their personal network and to further engage the Lauder alumni community in summer internship search for the students.
5. Contacts from other Lauder Institute Initiatives
There are seminars, speech series, Lauder-specific company presentations (or Employer Information Sessions) that are organized at the Lauder Institute. These events often provide a unique opportunity to make contacts with very interesting and influential people. While I do not know of any cases where these contacts led to summer employment per se, I have experienced the exceptional quality of career advice that is available through this interaction. I am grateful to all the people who have given me guidance and advice last spring.
These extras generated a large number of real employment opportunities last spring–a true competitive advantage and an extra value add of the Lauder degree.
Watching Chinese TV on PC and Mac
October 20, 2009 – 2:30 amOne of the best ways to watch Chinese TV on Windows machines is via an program called CCTV Box available for free from China Central Television: http://cctvbox.cctv.com
All the channels are built-in, and the number of available TV channels is impressive.
For Mac users, there is also a free solution: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ (This solution will work on Windows, too.)
After installation, start the program, click on File > Open network, then paste one of the following mms:// feeds in the dialog window when prompted:
1. CCTV 1 General: mms://cctv-live-cctv1.wm.llnwd.net/cctv_live_cctv1
2. CCTV 2 Finance: mms://cctv-live-cctv1.wm.llnwd.net/cctv_live_cctv2
3. CCTV 3 Arts: mms://cctv-live-cctv1.wm.llnwd.net/cctv_live_cctv3
4. CCTV 4 International (Chinese): mms://cctv-live-cctv1.wm.llnwd.net/cctv_live_cctv4
5. CCTV 5 Sports: mms://cctv-live-cctv1.wm.llnwd.net/cctv_live_cctv5
6. CCTV 6 Movies: mms://cctv-live-cctv1.wm.llnwd.net/cctv_live_cctv6
7. CCTV 7 Agriculture: mms://cctv-live-cctv1.wm.llnwd.net/cctv_live_cctv7
8. CCTV 8 TV Series: mms://cctv-live-cctv1.wm.llnwd.net/cctv_live_cctv8
9. CCTV 9 International (English): mms://cctv-live-cctv1.wm.llnwd.net/cctv_live_cctv9
10. CCTV 10 Science and education: mms://cctv-live-cctv1.wm.llnwd.net/cctv_live_cctv10
11. CCTV 11 Chinese opera: mms://cctv-live-cctv1.wm.llnwd.net/cctv_live_cctv11
12. CCTV 12 Society and law: mms://cctv-live-cctv1.wm.llnwd.net/cctv_live_cctv12
13. CCTV News: mms://cctv-live-cctv1.wm.llnwd.net/cctv_live_cctvnews
14. CCTV Music: mms://cctv-live-cctv1.wm.llnwd.net/cctv_live_cctvmusic
15. CCTV HD: mms://cctv-live-cctv1.wm.llnwd.net/cctv_live_cctvhd
Enjoy!
Why Wharton? Why now?
October 16, 2009 – 10:10 pmThroughout my time at Wharton/Lauder, quite a few people have approached me with questions about their applications to business schools. I have never refused to offer advice and help, but what I have noticed is that a large number of people with very strong profiles actually do not know or cannot explain why they have chosen to apply to Wharton beyond a simple “it is a great school”.
So why should you apply to Wharton, or why should you apply to a joint-degree program like Wharton/Lauder?
Frankly, there cannot be a single answer to these questions. What’s more, I think, everyone will and should have a different answer as every person is unique. Wharton is a big and exciting place where one may find absolutely endless possibilities, so which of these infinite vistas attract a particular applicant is absolutely and solely the choice of the individual in question.
A more important question is about one’s individual goals, why they are significant, and how education at a particular school could help achieve them at this point in time. What is the added value that one can potentially bring to the community at Wharton and beyond?
So why Wharton, Wharton/Lauder, Wharton/SAIS, Wharton/HBS, Wharton/Healthcare? — Come visit, talk to students and admissions officers, meet professors, use other channels to find out what the school has on offer and decide how these offerings fit your tastes and goals, and you will surely have your answer
At Wharton Admissions Event on October 16, 2009
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