Mark and Jie's Journey to B-School

We had a lunch today where 5 2nd year students talked to us about the schedule selection process for next year. This is one of many scheduled events that have been going on to help us with the baffling process of choosing courses. There are several things to consider when choosing your schedule, and it's difficult to balance them all:

• Professor/Class rating: You want to know how previous people rated the class, and especially the prof
• Actual impressions: It's even better to get someone who actually took the class to give you a feel for it, as some classes are perennially well-rated for no apparent reason.
• Schedule slot: Most classes are either taught in the fall or winter (spring), and not both. Also, there are X schedules and Y schedules, and you can't have too many courses in one or the other. X Schedules meet M-W, and Y W-F.
• Demand: Many of the popular courses are requested by 2-3 times as many students as they are able to accommodate.
  

Once you balance all those things you come up with a list of courses that you submit. So, the trick is to get in as many of your preferred courses as you can by placing them in the optimal order. It's a huge pain.

Our Finance 2 final is coming up on Friday, and today I helped lead the review session for our section. The two resident finance whizzes in the section helped out as well, and between the three of us I think we pretty much covered the important parts. It's kind of funny to reflect back on review sessions last semester and compare them to this one. Everyone has realized now how little grades matter, and are a lot more laid back about finals. There doesn't seem to be any more hectic studying or stressing over grades, everyone is learning what they can and letting grades take care of themselves.