MBA program overview

Having completed all but one course of the MBA program, I am now in a position to offer a better perspective concerning this program. Certainly the MBA can be considered a very useful professional degree, providing students with a wealth of knowledge applicable to the corporate world, particularly to intelligent and self-driven individuals aspiring to eventually rise to management and/or positions affecting the strategic direction of organization(s). Required courses include a combination of subjects involving a large amount of reading and synthesis- particularly in strategic planning, human behavior in organizations, operations management, leadership, information technology- as well as quantitatively based subjects including finance and accounting. The finance classes involve the most intense and advanced mathematical content. Mathematicians opting to complete the MBA program will likely derive the most enjoyment from these classes. Unsurprisingly, I opted for the finance emphasis in this program; as such, I completed classes in corporate valuation, investment and portfolio analysis, in addition to the required basic finance class. The strategic management class was also quite interesting, as it involved a business simulation game in which the class was broken down into 10 competing companies in the same industry. Over a 10-week period, we competed to optimize our own company's value and market share; each week, we made decisions regarding pricing, marketing, production, etc., with performance in the subsequent "year" dependent on the decisions made and entered into the simulation by each team. It was a fascinating illustration of game theory in practice.