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I-banks and consulting companies definitely care about grades (i understand that some schools don't disclose grades though). Grades were definitely important to the vast majority of students I know (real estate not so much).
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<p>See above. Most I-banks and consulting firms hire from their summer intern pool, for which they can see only a limited number of grades anyway. Many of their summer interns (who do well) will leave with a full-time offer in hand, making the 2nd year grades irrelevant (as long as they pass). </p>
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Even so, it's hard to imagine that it is that easy. In my school, I had 3 10+ pg cases, 3 midterms, and 2HW assignments all due the same week (and it's not like we received these in advance, nor would he have had much time to complete them in advance had we the opportunity). Some of my buddies had the additional burden of competing in a challenge out of state the weekend prior to that midterm week.
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<p>And how typical was that week exactly? After all, I highly doubt that you are having "3 midterms" every single week. </p>
<p>Besides, difficulty is measured by not how much work you are assigned, but what happens if you *don't do them<a href="or%20do%20poorly">/i</a>. You said it yourself: a grade below a C is almost never given out. Hence, you have the assurance of knowing that as long as you put in a bare minimum of effort, you are going to pass. Maybe not with top grades, but you will pass. And like I said, grades don't really matter that much anyway. </p>
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Well, I guess we agree to disagree. I come from a business background, and agree that much of the class discussions and class instruction is common sense. However, my experience has been that the exams and the assignments are quite difficult, as are the competitions, many of which all-nighters.
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<p>Again, the question is: *what happens if you just do poorly in those difficult exams/assignments? * The answer, apparently, is not much. You end up with a C. Honestly, so what? </p>
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This is completely subjective. What is brilliant? 180 IQ? My IQ is in the top percentile of the entire population. However, there are definitely people smarter than me in business school. There are also students who are not as smart as me, but everyone I know is pretty damn smart and on average they are DEFINITELY far more intelligent than the dozens of engineers that I know.
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<p>A strange response, for what you said is ALSO subjective. It all gets down to how you define 'smart'. </p>
<p>But I'll put it to you this way. I think the vast vast majority of all HBS MBA's would freely admit that, if put into, say, the first year of the Harvard Economics PhD program (which is the weeder year), they will do extremely poorly. Or, if you think that that's unfair, then, similarly, if the HBS MBA's were put into the first year of any of the HBS doctoral programs, again, they would do extremely poorly. I can tell you of one guy who recently graduated as a Baker Scholar from the HBS MBA program (meaning he graduated in the top 5% of the program), and then entered the HBS doctoral program, who recently said that he had never actually feared failing any of his classes he had ever taken in his entire life until he entered the first year of the doctoral program. {While he didn't fail, he barely passed.} </p>
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Again, take someone with a 115 IQ and put them in Harvard MBA Finance and I'm guessing the coursework isn't going to be easy.
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<p>Uh, really? Would you like to see some of the cases they do in the HBS finance course (and the course is all cases)? They're not that hard. </p>
<p>Now, again, I agree that they are hard to get a top grade in. But like I said, you don't really need to get a top grade. Numerous employers - even financial services employers - don't care very much about your grades. As a case in point, I know another guy who also graduated as a Baker Scholar (and hence had excellent grades, having won both first and second year honors) but who didn't get the job he wanted (in a particular hedge fund), as that HF firm instead hired other guys who had far worse grades (i.e. hadn't earned honors in either of their years). That's because those other guys 'played the game' better: in that deliberately chose to spend less time studying and worrying about grades and more time doing the networking and socializing it took to get a meeting with that HF. That first guy couldn't even get a meeting. </p>
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One last thought- Harvard or not, if at least some of the courses aren't hard, the school is really not doing a good job. There is a lot in a good MBA that isn't even close to common sense...reference some of the more stochastic subjects like revenue management and Black-Scholes calculations.
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<p>But you don't need to know that stuff! That is to say, if you just want to complete your MBA, you don't really need to know how, say, Black-Scholes is derived. You just need to know how to use it, which, frankly, isn't that hard. </p>
<p>Let me put it to you this way. I got the latest copy of the Journal of Finance right here on my desk. Now, honestly, how many MBA's can understand any of its articles? Heck, how many can even get past the first few equations of the model in any of the articles? I'm going to go with 'zero' and I don't think I will be far off. The fact is: they don't NEED to know it. </p>
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Classes like economics and satistics aren't "common sense", or the population in general would have a clue how the fed operates,
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<p>Again, you don't need to know that stuff at any serious level. Again, let me give you an example. How many MBA's know of General Equilibrium Theory? Forget about actually trying to compute it, I'm just talking about simply knowing what GE even is, that is, how it accords with the Fundamental Theorems of Welfare Economics, and, say, examples of multiple equilibria? Or, more simply, how many MBA's can actually explain what exactly is the difference between Marshallian Demand vs. Hicksian demand, and how are they related? Again, I'm going to go with zero MBA students, and I don't think I will be far off. That's because, again, as an MBA student, you just don't need to know that stuff. But these are the fundamental tenets of economics. </p>
<p>You want to talk statistics? Ok. How many MBA students actually use instrumental variables and two-stage least squared (2SLS) analyses to establish causation? How about tobit regressions to account for data censoring? How many compensate for heteroskedasticity? Heck, how many of them even know what these terms mean?. That's true statistics, but again, you don't really need to know that stuff if you're an MBA student.</p>
<p>Let's be perfectly honest. The stuff they teach you in MBA courses is, frankly, quite low-level. To be perfectly blunt, most reasonably intelligent undergrads can do that stuff. And in fact, some business schools teach MBA students and undergrads together in the same courses...* and find that the undergrads actually do better than the MBA students*. To name one school: Wharton found this to be true (although it almost certainly had to do with the grade nondisclosure policy that covers MBA students, but not undergrads). Nevertheless, it demonstrates that MBA work is not harder than undergrad work.</p>