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.