Seven years on, I am strangely happy with my undergraduate degree, as I seem to have majored in the one subject that offers me a good chance of waiving elements of the “core” course, without blocking any future classes in Stern.
The Stern structure for Core curriculum is such that there are two non-negotiable core courses, and then a pool of seven classes of which you need to take at least five. Seven, obviously being recommended as it provides a full business grounding. That is applicable to most students, until the whole world of waiver exams and prior degrees kick in.
Four years study should preclude me from having to take the core Economics classes (two - one Micro, one Macro). As far as the Stern record is concerned, waiving through prior study records as though I have passed the course (obviously there is no GPA or credit for it, just that competence at that level is recorded). This is important, as the structure of courses with pre-requisites, co-requisites and dependents rely heavily on the core (hence the name). Anyway - first term, no economics. Bravo to that.
As part of my undergrad there was a serious push towards econometrics in the school, and the whole of the data and statistics course has an eerie familiarity to it. t-tests, f-stats, chi-squared, null hypothesis… I haven’t seen these things before me for a long time, but they are already insighting vivid flashbacks of ARMA, hetroskedasticity and spurious correlations. There is a waiver exam for the course, which is an alternative way to establish proficiency (same as I get on Economics). This one will require a bit of work on my part, to freshen up.
If this works out, I will effectively complete six of the optional (pool) core of my MBA in first term (four core classes, two waivers). In more crazy moments I have also toyed with trying a waiver on the Accountancy exam, having studied accountancy recently in a forgettable sequence of professional exams. A little thought on the fact that IFRS ≠ Accruals accounting, the likely inclusion of S-Ox, plus the fact that I have never had the benefit of formal instruction in Accountancy have all led me to abandon this. Further, waiving both Stats and Econ will mean two less classes with my allocated group (go Group 3! It is really quite tricky to get excited by numbers one through six…). I have mixed feelings about that, but another two will be with them, so hopefully it will just mean they get less annoyed by me. I will be there to help on the classes I don’t have to study folks, I assure you.
All considered, this should really leave me with a fairly balanced first semester. Losing the Stats will be a killer victory, just because not studying Stats has to be a good thing in anyone’s books. Marketing, Strategy and Competitive Advantage from Operations are definitely going to provide a lot of interest that the familiar, computative topics would not. Wordy stuff. I wonder how several years of drafting proposal papers and agenda points will help me with that. The operations course is a whole new world, and the simulations involved in proving how difficult it is to run an efficient warehouse should be interesting. Maybe I will end up admiring Tesco after all (the past economist has begrudgingly made me consider this possibility).
FAO Stern people - having downloaded the definitive list of prerequisites from Stern (there is a technicolor sheet in there, near the course waiver bit), I am going to try and return to my plan to build a class planning module in excel. It is kind-of half the way there, but there is some of the tricky live bits to finish (the bits that react to what you have already selected). If it works, it should make it so you know where you are with regard to specialisations, limits in course units allowed and stuff. In my minds eye it will be awesome. I’ll pop it up here as and when.
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