Wanna be a banker

Found this video today. It is really funny and very apt...

Exam fever

4 down, 2 more to go! I am talking about exams. My first term at HEC will end on Friday with the Marketing exam. Before that, there is the Supply Chain Management exam on Wednesday. Both these exams are closed book and after taking all other exams with open book, it is difficult to take a closed book exam. Now I'll have to actually read the books and remember the concepts. The SCM proff has declared that he will give us a sheet containing important formulae during the exam. This is good because it would have been difficult otherwise to remember so many formulae.

I am in a fix right now as I dont have the SCM book! I went to the library today to get the book but all books were already issued. They have 2 copies which students can use in the library. So I will sit in the library tomorrow to study. This is going to be an entirely new experience! I have never studied in a library. Let's see how this turns out.

Barbarians At The Gate

I picked up this book Friday morning and finished reading it yesterday night at 1 AM. I read all of its 600+ pages in 4 days, during my exams (I had an accounting final exam today morning).

This was my first book after a gap of 4 months. I had never thought that I would take time out of my MBA schedule to read books but I started reading because I wanted a book to kill time when I felt bored of other routine activities. But once I started reading it, there was no stopping me.

The book is about the bid for RJR Nabisco - one of the larget takeover bids in corporate history. It details the history of companies involved, the people involved and makes a compelling reading for anyone interested in a career in Investment Banking and particularly Mergers and Acquisitions.

The significance of this book can be gauged by the fact that it has been named 4th in the list of 20 most influential business books by Forbes.

HEC Paris - Top Ranked European B-school

We have done it again. For the second year in a row, HEC Paris has been ranked the top b-school in Europe by Financial Times. Read the complete report here

Exams approaching

Core 1 will end in 3 weeks. Our first exam is on Wed and I haven't even started studying; there are so many other things to do. Today, I applied to 2 banks for summer internships, thus taking my total applications to 3. I did hear back from one of the banks only 2 days after I submitted my application; the HR lady wanted to interview me for a role/function that I wasn't too keen on, so I politely declined and she said they will keep my application for my desired function and will get back to me later. Hopefully, they should call me before the end of Dec.

Last week was another hectic one; I had 3 presentations - French was ok, Sustainable Development was good but Marketing was not good. We went unprepared for the presentation and it showed. There are some important learnings from this presentation which I hope will help me do better in future.

Last week, we celebrated Japan week in our campus. Our Japanese classmates organized a host of events on this occasion - the notable being Japanese films, Wii games, Japanese fashion show and Sushi eating competition. The events were organized very professionally and we had a great time. Looking forward to more such events at HEC..