Search This Blog

Monday, November 20, 2006

CLOSING MOMENTS OF TERM-5

Term-5 is almost over. Just the exams left to bring the formal close. No term break for me considering the fact that the exams are stretched over a period of one week. And my exams are schedules towards the end of the week…..only left with the traditional week end for the respite.

Five graded courses….Macro-economics (MAPI)….PAEV all these made life hectic. But the courses were great and the kind of courses I took, were both different and enlightening. Apart form the traditional finance courses like Advanced Corporate Finance and Econometrics, I had also taken a course in Microfinance and another in Real Estate and Property Finance. ISB is one of the few schools to offer courses in such specialized but potentially strong topics.

Advanced corporate finance was great , and only if I could have managed to give some more time to the cases, the learning curve would have been really great.But, this is one of the drawbacks of a one-year MBA. We are always hard pressed for time.Yet, the course was great…the cases were fabulous... and Prof Shankar De stressed a lot on the intuitive aspects of finance. The course pack is simply awesome and is a great reference.

Micro-finance is slightly different and took me away from the lectures of corporate decision making to topics like group lending, micro credits, rural India and numerous African countries where Micro finance has been implemented successfully….Lots of potential lies stored for this field in India and Prof. Shamika Ravi is successful in infusing a lot of interest.

Real estate was again different in the sense that it got into lot of technicality into the real estate terminologies. Lot of abbreviations and new concepts….CMBS…REITS…which when added to the traditional concepts of finance gives a new picture to the old world. The ppts of Prof Piyush Tiwari are huge and it demands a lot of time to prepare for the end terms.

Financial Econometrics is highly mathematical and Prof. Mudit Kapoor taught the topic in great manner…White noise…ARCH model…GARCH model…random walk model….just to name a few jargons from this course.

The course on Strategical Alliances, by Prof. Gurneeta Vasudeva was quite nice and brought different aspects of alliances. It was mostly case based with plenty of interesting readings.

That’s about my courses of Term-5.
There were also courses like Marketing Research, Pricing, Branding, Futures & Options, IT related course, Logistics and Supply Management, Global manufacturing strategy….the list is really long….and depending on the interests, aspirations and the availability, were chosen by the students.
Meanwhile, the job postings are on a rise. A singapore based health care consultancy and a couple of international software and telecom companies are the latest to post their requirements.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Sabya, I have been through your blog a couple of times and I notice that most of the articles are about your courses or exams...Why dont you write more about yourself..your thoughts on something..or plain musings....No offence meant but it sounds more like a marketing campaign for courses !!!!!

Sabyasachi said...

Anon...will try my best to make the blog include other topics as well.
Thanks for your inputs.