Posted 6:13 PM by Zachary (e-mail)
Michigan Whips Ohio State
...in basketball, too. Just like the hockey games, the student section in Crisler Arena is in a prime spot: right up at the court, along the bench side. This gave a great view for the Wolverine's 75-64 knockout of the Buckeyes, in the final home game of the season.

Posted 3:30 PM by Zachary (e-mail)
Michigan Ice Hockey
Over Spring Break, I finally got out to Yost Arena to see a UM ice hockey game. An intimate old barn, seating only 6,600, it's a great place to see the action up close and personal.


Michigan ice hockey fans have a reputation for being...quite spirited (this site gives a taste of the profanity-laced chants that echoed throughout the game), and they lived up to that reputation for the game against Bowling Green.


Seating was pretty casual, and since Michigan was playing a lesser opponent (hey, we won 7-3), seating was pretty casual. I could move down to the first row of seats for much of the game.


Compare and contrast: Michigan scoring on the Bowling Green goalie, Michigan's goalie stopping a Bowling Green shot

Posted 6:45 PM by Zachary (e-mail)
Winter A Comes to an End
The first half of the Winter term wrapped up this week: the general sentiment among MBA1s is "thank goodness". The past six weeks really was a jumble, what with recruiting trips and interviews and club elections and MAP announcements and career counselor interviews. To summarize the past couple of weeks:

Finals
Statistics today, Operations Management tomorrow (yes, we have a final exam on Saturday, Valentine's Day--at Michigan, we don't need no stinkin' romance!), Organizational Behavior on Monday, Managerial Accounting Tuesday, and Options & Futures Wednesday. Honestly, I think most students will be happy to have all this behind us...because Spring Break awaits.

MAPs
By and large, most MBAs are pretty happy with the MAP projects they were matched up with. I know I was: I'll be heading to Ireland to work with Nowcasting International on a [business] project. Some of my classmates are off to India, China, Peru, South Africa, or working for companies like Intel, Northwest Airlines, and Ford. Very cool.

Club Elections
The majority of the business school clubs held officer elections in the past ten days. The school in general had a great year in terms of Wall Street recruiting, in no small part due to the efforts of the Finance Club officers. Having benefited from their hard work, I wanted to pass along what I learned to next year's class, so I ran for--and was elected as--the VP of Sales & Trading for the club.

Washington Campus
I didn't find out about Michigan's participation in the Washington Campus until it the last second, but I did get my application in and was accepted to attend the May session. I'll post more on this topic as that date approaches, but basically it's an intensive, week-long course, in Washington, DC, on various aspects of public policy, business, and politics.

Posted 10:49 PM by Zachary (e-mail)
Core Curriculum Redesign
In his latest "Around the Halls" newsletter, Associate Dean Anderson lays out the newly redesigned core curriculum, which will be in place for the Class of 2006 next fall. The bulk of the changes involve 1) shuffling the order of some of the core courses and 2) condensing the 14 week core courses to 7 weeks.

As a reminder, at UMBS the 14 week Fall and Winter terms are broken into halves, labeled A and B. The current core curriculum runs as follows:

Fall A :
Finance (1.5 credits)
Financial Accounting (1.5 credits)
Marketing (1.5 credits)
Business Economics (1.5 credits)
Corporate Strategy (1.5 credits)

Fall B:
Finance (continued) (1.5 credits)
Financial Accounting (continued) (1.5 credits)
Marketing (continued) (1.5 credits)
Business Economics (continued) (1.5 credits)
World Economy (1.5 credits)

Winter A:
Operations (1.5 credits)
Organizational Behavior (1.5 credits)
Statistics (1.5 credits)
Managerial Accounting (1.5 credits)

1.5 credit courses meet twice a week for a total of 3 hours of class time, meaning that the Fall A and B terms involve 15 hours of lecture time.

The new core curriculum is structured as follows:

Fall A:
Financial Accounting (2.25 credits)
Microeconomics (2.25 credits)
Corporate Strategy (2.25 credits)
Quantitative Methods in Business (i.e. Statistics) (2.25 credits)
Analytical Finance (optional; for finance majors) (2.25 credits)

Fall B:
Financial Management (not needed if Analytic Finance taken in Fall A) (2.25 credits)
Marketing (2.25 credits)
Organizational Behavior (2.25 credits)

Winter A:
Managerial Accounting (2.25 credits)
Operations (2.25 credits)

Core courses that give 2.25 credits would involve over four hours of classroom time each week.

My Thoughts on The Change
On balance, I think the changes are a net positive. The biggest downside is that, for finance-oriented students (who cannot place out of any core classes), the Fall A courseload is much heavier--it's almost like taking seven of the current core classes at once. Also, students interested in marketing will have to wait until late October before they can get started on that course.

However, the upsides are plenty:
1) Moving Statistics to Fall A from Winter A is smart, since those skills come in handy in so many of the later classes.
2) Only two core courses in Winter A frees up time for MBA1s to work on recruiting/interviewing.
3) MBA1s will also have the option to take a couple electives by the time interviewing begins. That's another boon to Wall Street-focused students, who (if they make it through Fall A) could get the useful electives like Valuation, Options & Futures, or Fixed Income Securities under their belt before interviews.

In both the old and new design, the 7 weeks of Winter B are dedicated solely to MAP projects.

Posted 9:55 AM by Zachary (e-mail)
Musings and News
* The dominant sights and sounds of the past two weeks have been business suits and cell phones, business suits and cell phones. Of the 85% of classmates who show up to the average class, a good quarter are dressed for interviews.

* Anecdotally, this was a very strong year for Wall Street recruiting. For Investment Banking, there seems to have been a jump in numbers of summer offers here at Michigan (although it's not clear whether that means more students are getting offers, or the same number of students are pulling down more offers; I know classmates with three or four I-Banking offers in hand). Sales and Trading is a smaller discipline here at Michigan, but I know on-campus offers are up big over last year.

* The biggest difference between the current recruiting season and the late 90s, I think, is the emphasis placed on that summer internship. In the 90s, MBA students could spend the summer doing anything and still collect several I-Banking full-time offers the following autumn. These days, it's a huge disadvantage (during full-time recruiting) to not have a summer internship under your belt. In some ways, this is a shame, because there are tons of interesting summer internships in the Michigan job database that have to be passed up for the Wall Street programs.

* One of the unexpected side-effects of landing a summer offer, I've found, is a sudden lack of any tangible goal (at least for the next few months). That is, for the past five months (longer, actually) I've been relentlessly focused on getting that S&T job. Accomplishing that brought excitement/happiness/relief, but also a week of feeling aimless and unfocused.

Of course, there's the everpresent goals of learning the course materials and keeping abreast of the markets and economy, but those aren't very tangible. Thus, I decided to set a couple goals related to helping next year's MBA class: becoming a career counselor and being elected as the Finance Club's VP of Sales & Trading.

* One of the Office of Career Development's greatest resources are its career counselors. These are trained MBA2s (and BBA2s) who provide career advice to other business school students, whether it be in the form of resume reviews, practice interviews, general industry discussions, or whatnot. Starting with my first week in school, I took advantage of this resource early and often, amassing over a dozen sessions with them over the past five weeks. Now it's time to give back, and I'd love to share my [voluminous, yet successful] job hunting experience with incoming students.

Posted 9:38 AM by Zachary (e-mail)
Michigan Weather
December 2 - January 31
Winter is here.

For the most part, the mild weather of November continued through mid-December. Mind you, "mild" by Michigan standards means lows in the 30s.

By January, however, old man winter came a knockin', and he brought his burly friends with him. I would bet that the thermometer didn't top 38 the whole month, with most days the highs staying firmly below freezing. It has snowed off and on for most of the month (which I don't mind; better to be snowy and 29 than clear and 9). I can count on my fingers the number of sunny days in the month.

The good news is that most MBA1s were too busy focused on job searches to notice the weather (oddly enough for me, the coldest weather I've felt this year were the first two Thursdays of the month in New York). And if Weather.com is any guide, the temperatures only can go up from here. Plus, spring break is only a few weeks away...

Previous Update: October 3 - December 1