<p>Does any current penn student who has taken mgmt 100 want to explain it a little? i'm a bit curious.</p>
<p>i.e. how are the "teams" picked? how much time do you spend with your group working on the project per week? do these people usually become the group of friends they hang out with? etc. thanks!</p>
<p>MGMT 100 is really time consuming. Every complains about it. I'm not in Wharton but that was the constant experience of my friends.</p>
<p>it's tough because you do peer reviews and the individual members of your group are graded according to the curve (meaning not everyone gets the same grade).</p>
<p>teams are assigned a single ta, and having a good relationship with your ta is important...</p>
<p>The class has a more social aspect than an academic one. The teams are randomly picked. The project you get will determine the amount of time you spend on your project, but with its academic components the class takes up a good amount of time. It's a great bonding experience if you have an optimistic attitude towards it (really depends on your team members).</p>
<p>You either love it or hate it, but more people hate it.</p>
<p>I saw some videos on youtube with the TAs...it seemed kind of fun. Or like the students/TAs had fun.</p>
<p>Some parts of it are fun, I won't lie, but it's a huge timesink compared to your other classes. You'll be meeting your group members outside of class a lot. It's more a social class than anything else, where your grade isn't necessarily determined by the amount of work you do. If you're outgoing, you'll tend to do better because you'll be more likely to participate and get along with your group members. If you're not outgoing, you'll probably participate less and receive lower peer evaluations, or simply get labeled as a data-cruncher.</p>
<p>To get a high grade in MGMT, you need to not only be active socially but also contribute concretely. When you evaluate your peers, you also provide some explanation as to why. If you have contributed something concrete (ie. "She has been taking meeting minutes for the past twenty meetings now" or "He coordinated our trip to the event and provided transportation" or "He gathered up all our research information and created a really useful summary/statistical analysis"), then people will have something to say about you and you'll get a better peer evaluation. It's hard to give a good peer evaluation to someone when you can't think of anything they've done over someone who has.</p>
<p>I know a few people including myself who made friends from MGMT 100, but other than that it's pretty self-contained. The biggest complaint you'll hear is that the grading seems random. You have people who seemed to be sure-fire A's but they end up with B's, and people who didn't do a whole lot that receive A-'s or better. The people who do absolutely nothing usually get screwed either way, however.</p>
<p>It's a rather crazy class. The reality though is that although it has good intentions, the execution and grading is horribly skewed. It's heavily weighted in favor of outgoing, personable people, whereas people who may be shy might be at a disadvantage unless they overcome it (which usually gives people a reason to bump them up in peer evals). The people who participate actively and try to lead tend to get the upper push. </p>
<p>My group met at least 2-4 times a week outside of class for roughly 1-2 hours each, roughly estimating. There is also a status report and final presentation, which both contribute a huge portion to your overall grade. If you both either of those, you'll lose your A. The people who did well in that class pretty much rocked both of those. Grading for the status report is totally bogus sometimes.</p>
<p>I took a friend's advice by going early in status reports "because they go easier on you," and I think it was a bad choice. There's no real link between average grade and the round in which you give your status report. You will have both good and bad ones all the way through, and the grading seems more or less the same in each case. Everyone in my class' second round of status reports got absolutely raped grade-wise because we had tough topics and we didn't know how we were being graded. You get graded down for little things wrong in your slides (e.g. title styles, picture styles, structure, etc) or the way in which you deliver your presentation (e.g. not walking enough, hand gestures, voice, eyes, etc). There are things you get graded down for that you could have easily fixed had you heard about it. Nobody will tell you "Be sure to verbally mention the article and author of the source when you use one of the source's facts" until somebody gets graded down for it. Even if you take your TA's advice in terms of structuring your slides and information, those same pieces of advice can get you graded down! </p>
<p>By the time you hit the last round, you should have a huge list of criteria that will make it easier to refine your status report. I highly advise holding it off until later, because by then you can see what works and what doesn't. They say the later-round status reports are harder because "they expect more from you," but in my opinion, it's a huge advantage. You're better off doing everything right and getting graded down for something lame like hand gestures as opposed to getting graded down for stupid things you could have prevented/changed AND hand gestures on top of it. </p>
<p>So, if I had to give someone a key recipe to owning MGMT 100, this would be it:</p>
<p>Speak up, give concrete contributions, raise your hand and have something to say whenever possible, make an effort to get along well with your teammates and try to include everyone in discussions, take a later-round status report so you have a better idea what makes a good report versus a lesser one, dominate your final presentation and head it with the best speakers of your team (if that is yourself, then that's even better)</p>
<p>that sucks that the grading is messed up. Did you find that the class was rewarding though? It seems like awesome in terms of actually preparing students for business.</p>
<p>Personally I didn't find it rewarding, but this is merely my own experience. I think there are better classes for business preparation.</p>
<p>So you're saying MGMT 100, one of the centerpieces of the Wharton experience, something that Wharton prides itself about is not very rewarding? Do you think it would've been better with better grading?</p>
<p>Well, you get assigned this huge packet of readings but few people actually read them all, and it makes discussion in class a little dull sometimes. However, I guess this provides incentive for people to actually do the reading so they can participate and have something to talk about. The status reports are flawed for the reasons I said above, and likewise for the peer evaluations. Some people act really fake or "suckuppy" just because they know there are peer evaluations, even though they aren't a huge percent of your grade. It happens, regardless.</p>
<p>My main complaint is that the activities in the course encourage a lot of BS. People have to sometimes make up stories about their team in order for things to fit the structure of the task at hand. Some of the tasks just feel out of place (again, just my opinion), such as writing a business memo. Things like that just felt like a grand waste of time. And then, at the end of the day, everything you do in MGMT is only like 50% of your grade, and the teachers decide the rest based on your final presentation and an essay you write.</p>
<p>I feel that a more obvious grading scheme with different weights would make the class more enjoyable. Peer evaluations are <em>generally</em> pretty fair, but sometimes the extroverted people get the upper hand even if an introverted person has contributed more to a team. Status reports either need to be removed from the class or graded differently with a more specific grading scheme. I can't count the number of times I've heard "Why the hell did they grade me down for this? We were never told we had to do this!" or "They never said we could get graded down for that!"</p>
<p>Other than that, it's a good course to just get to know new people and have fun coming up with ideas and solutions to various aspects of your semester project.</p>
<p>I don't blame you for not liking the course. I hate BS as well. It's something that I had to deal with in HS all the time. I wish that more professors/teachers would try and get rid of it because while I admit that I've BSed in the past, I think it really takes away from learning and discussing important thing. </p>
<p>How did you feel about your team? Do you feel like it was easy to cooperate and work with people in the groups? (I mean more in the sense of the type of people).</p>
<p>I agree with most of what legend has posted. The MGMT project can provide some opportunities for learning but the lecture itself is really BS.
It seemed like most of what was discussed in lectures was common sense - like don't use all caps in professional emails, etc.</p>
<p>In general, working with the people in your group is fine. You will, on average, have a person or two (or sometimes three) who don't really do a whole lot and just kinda sit along for the ride while a select few take the initiative and get things rolling. Your group will need to figure out an effective means of communication -- it's really up to you guys as to how to get your work done.</p>
<p>Personally, my group started out using Email but we soon found it to be ineffective (stuff like this is the sort of thing you discuss in class during lecture), and moved on to using WhenToMeet to engage in group meetings so we could ensure everyone figured out what they were doing face-to-face, and we also took meeting minutes and uploaded them to Wharton's Webcafe so we could always check to see what was going on with the project. In general I got along with my team, but there were occasional scuffles among members when someone was slacking or not contributing much in times of high stress. In the end though our team had the highest-scoring final presentation so I think we did a good job getting our act together.</p>
<p>Again, every group is different and has their own way to get their stuff done, and figuring out your team's personality types and how they operate is essential to figuring out the best way to structure your team and work processes. This sort of thing is what I feel is an important skill derived from MGMT -- the actual hands-on experience of working with a close team in order to achieve a larger goal/produce a high-quality deliverable. </p>
<p>The other parts of the class are arguably BS. As neutralnuke said, the lecture just feels too common-sense for the most part. While the advice is usually sound, most of the time it's nothing new.</p>
<p>You'll read case-examples that usually have obvious solutions even from a subjective standpoint, although there are a few good exercises that have a high variance with respect to class response, and these sort of cases are the ones I wish MGMT would focus more on. A few examples I can recall off the top of my head: Choosing whether or not to fire someone who is high-performing but asking for too many benefits, negotiating over who gets what share of a limited resource when both parties involved have legitimate claims to the resource and its utilization, determining a buy/sell price for antiques, etc. Those examples were interesting and fun and there were many different responses from different classmates. However, most of the time, examples were obvious with very few dissenting voices. </p>
<p>MGMT is interesting and it can be fun working with your team, but I just feel that the execution could be a lot better.</p>
<p>Have you thought about making these suggestions to the Wharton people? I'm sure they take student input, but I'm not sure how much it will change the class.</p>
<p>Every MGMT class has a session near the end when they ask for feedback about the course. I've already suggested everything I've stated above. I am not sure how much feedback they actually act on. I think most people would generally agree with what I've said above, but I think Wharton wants to make MGMT 100 taught a certain way and so I think they will keep the formula even if most people aren't super-fond of the course. My suggestions are merely my own opinions as to what would make the course more enjoyable -- it may or may not align well with what they want us to get out of the course, but I feel like MGMT would be better if they changed in these ways because it would eliminate the negative influence of the grade weights and focus more on group dynamics and more difficult management issues instead of the more common-sense concepts that are so frequently discussed in lecture.</p>
<p>I don't know how effective our suggestions will be, i.e. I'm pretty lazy.</p>
<p>One crucial piece of advice I have for you is: take lecture with Greenhalgh. All of my friends in her lectures thought she was a great professor. I was stuck with Elting and really hated the class because Elting plays favorites and ... I don't know, just didn't like her.
I heard that Greenhalgh really makes class interesting - she memorizes everyone's names in the ~60 people lecture.</p>
<p>So this summer, when you find out what cohort you are in, try to switch to Greenhalgh's lecture if you aren't already in it.</p>
<p>MGMT 100 will still be BS but taking it with Greenhalgh will be better.</p>
<p>I'm applying for transfer...so I'll find out next year I think...because I think we take MGMT 100 in the spring.</p>
<p>I too was a transfer student (albeit internally), so I was in the MGMT section for transfers</p>
<p>"It's a rather crazy class. The reality though is that although it has good intentions, the execution and grading is horribly skewed. It's heavily weighted in favor of outgoing, personable people, whereas people who may be shy might be at a disadvantage unless they overcome it (which usually gives people a reason to bump them up in peer evals). The people who participate actively and try to lead tend to get the upper push."</p>
<p>I see nothing wrong with that grading system; after all, it is a business school. These things do matter, and getting over shyness is obviously an important aspect of success in business.</p>
<p>I agree -- I'm just saying it is heavily weighted in this way, and so you're at a huge disadvantage if you're naturally introverted/quiet/shy/whatever. My main gripes lie with the lecture and the status reports.</p>