Let the summer begin...

I wish I could take more time to write about some of the great experiences here... I'm writing them down as I go and will hopefully have more opportunities to share them with you. This post will be more of an update than any great insight.

We had our last final exam yesterday which concluded a 5 day period of 5 hour exams each day. My section had an end-of-year-dinner at a local Cambridge restaurant (which hosted about 70 of us), and then most of us went on to party the night away with about 300 other HBSers at a Boston club. These kinds of big Boston parties were a relatively routine occurrence during the school year, but I generally didn't leave Cambridge on weeknights. I felt however that finishing the last final and our amazing first year warranted a little bit of an extra celebration. What a great way to finish off the year! I feel very close to my section and am so grateful to have met so many wonderful people here. I really underestimated the value of the "section experience" when I first applied to HBS. It's been integral to my entire experience.

Tomorrow I fly to Israel for a student led 10 day tour with 80+ of my first year classmates (that's about 9% of the class). Another large group is doing a Japan student led trek, and other students are going home for a week or two before starting their internships. Some students are even starting their summer internship next week so they can have their vacation on the back end. Summer break is 14 weeks and most internships are 10 weeks, though some (like myself) are doing two internships. I have 2 weeks off on the front end, then 12 weeks at Goldman and BCG that will take me straight into my second year.

I hope to continue updating the blog over the summer with more lessons from HBS. For those of you who have emailed with questions... I will do my best to get to everyone. Thank you for the great feedback.

Let the summer begin!

Cost of one minute at HBS

Today was my last day of first year cases at HBS and we begin our finals on Thursday. There are so many takeaways to write about, it's difficult to know where to begin and I doubt I will even scratch the surface. It's been an incredible year.

One of the skills many students learn and/or improve thanks to the case method is oral communication since half of one's class grade is based on class participation. There are about 30 cases per course, and the average student speaks every other case per class, so around 15 comments per semester for each student per class (though it probably varies from 10-20).

This means that the professor determines half of your grade on an average of 15 comments over the period of 3.5 months. That's not an incredibly deep well of information to help differentiate 94 highly talented students. It's for this reason that oral communication is so important. One must learn to briefly and persuasively speak in front of a crowd if he or she is to excel. Most class comments last under a minute, and more often they are only a few sentences. I therefore think this is an excellent laboratory to hone persuasive public speaking, and I firmly believe this is a key skill for business leaders. Even if one is great at giving public speeches, knowing how to inject 30 seconds of persuasive wisdom in the proper context is a different story and a different challenge. Preparation can also only go so far, because to be effective, one has to comment "in the flow" of the discussion, and it's difficult to really prepare for all permutations of arguments that will emerge. A terrible comment is one that was brilliantly prepared the night before and presented totally out of context of the comment preceding it.

Another way to analyze how important one can take his/her class comments is to compute how much other people are paying to hear you speak.

HBS Class of 2012 tuition is $48,600. There are approximately 30 cases per course, and 10 courses in the first year, so 300 total cases. Assuming that the entire tuition goes towards a pure learning environment, that means we pay $48,600/330 or $162 per case. This doesn't include $4,850 in support fees which goes toward buying the physical cases themselves and other support material.

Much of the value of being at HBS is captured outside of the classroom through networking, recruiting, and the lifetime value of brand itself. However, let's make the extreme assumption for a moment that all of the tuition cost is captured in its entirety during the actual HBS class hours. Each case is taught for exactly 80 minutes, so one pays roughly $2 for every minute of an HBS class. There are 94 students in my section, so if you decide to speak for one minute, other students are effectively paying $186 for every minute to hear you speak. When I presented this analysis to some of my classmates at the start of the year, they began taking their comments much more seriously.

One of my personal lessons was that if you have 5 minutes of absolutely fantastic points to make, and you only have 2 minutes to do it in, you shouldn't give the same 5 minute speech but at 2.5x speed. Similarly if you only have 1 minute, one shouldn't simply cut out half the speech and rush as much as possible into one minute. One has to tailor all of his comments to fit the format (length) and obviously the audience. One may feel like he has 3-4 amazingly brilliant points to make to support an argument, but he can actually be more persuasive if instead of rushing through them he makes a single overarching comment that captures the greatest impact. Students have to sometimes get over the desire to "hear themselves talk" in order to actually be more effective.

This is indeed an art form. The case method is therefore one of the highlights of my HBS experience thus far.

HBS Learning Teams: Then and Now

It's 7:25am when I walk on campus; a thousand determined students wearing backpacks and carrying a coffee mug are darting back and forth seamlessly crossing each others' path. They are all heading to their learning teams to review the day's cases. There is only an hour before the first class of the day.

I arrive precisely at 7:30am to meet with my learning team. We've secured a coveted room in Spangler Hall thanks to our assigned team member who arrived at 6:50am to squat and stake learning team 122's morning place of study. I see the dejected look on the faces of other teams who only sent a squatting representative to arrive at 7:15 or 7:20am, and could not secure a study room. Those poor teams will be relegated to hold their study session in the noisy cafeteria, or the first random set of steps they find. Real estate at 7:30am at HBS has a lot more demand than supply.

That was the scene in September, the first month of the school year. It is in stark contrast to April.

Now I still arrive precisely at 7:30am, but as I walk on campus I sometimes wonder if there is a holiday I was not aware of. I'll see an occasional squirrel dart across the grass, or a maintenance worker pull up to the parking lot. Occasionally I'll even see another student from the across the field. We look at each other with an immediate feeling of understanding, as though we are the last human survivors in an apocalyptic movie scene.

I walk into Spangler Hall and up the stairs to the study rooms. I pass one cold dark room after another, heading to the beacon of light emerging from our study room's semi-translucent door; finally a sign of life. I'm usually not the first member of the team there, nor am I ever the last, and I'm generally always on time. We chat for a few minutes about our previous evening, and then crack open our notes and engage in a great discussion about the day's cases. Our discussions can become quite passionate and we usually extend past 60 minutes, leading us to rush to our individual classes at 8:35am for our 8:40am class start. We bid each other goodbye "...have a great day. I'll see you tomorrow!"

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Confused by what I'm talking about? Let me briefly fill you in. HBS assigns semi-randomly chosen 6 students from across different sections to form a "learning team." Every first year student is assigned to a learning team in the same fashion. The idea of the learning team is to build a support structure, a safety net, and to enhance the learning process. Learning teams meet for an hour before class starts to review the cases of the day. HBS provides opportunities to discuss how to best go about spending this hour, but ultimately every team decides for themselves how to run their meetings. Furthermore, these teams are not mandatory, so students only attend for as long as they desire. They are also free to leave one team for another.

At the beginning of the year students are a little stressed out about their cases and classes, and feel like they will be disadvantaged by not meeting with their team. Practically everyone starts with a serious intent to maximize their experience. Within a few weeks though, it's no longer necessary to arrive at Spangler early to secure a study room. Learning teams still meet, but real estate supply meets demand. By the end of the first semester, and for a variety of reasons, many learning teams disband. This process continues throughout the second semester, especially during the internship recruiting period, to the present point in which the number of learning teams meeting probably represents single digit percentages of the student population.

Why does this happen? I think for any number of different reasons:

• It's easier to sleep in another hour when you're out partying until 1-2am
• You've become comfortable enough reading cases that you feel adequately prepared to handle the class without the benefit of peer discussion
• Inter-personal problem among team members
• People in your learning team are not at your level of commitment, and you don't want to feed "freeloaders"

One of the silliest reasons I've heard someone justify learning team break-ups is "I simply don't have time for it anymore. I'm too busy!" I think this is awkward because I would say the reverse "I can't afford not to come to my learning team. It saves me so much time!" Indeed, if a 60 minute learning team which starts at 7:30am doesn't save you over 60 minutes of preparation time the night before, I too wouldn't come to my learning team. I didn't continue to attend my learning team out of some transcendental or spiritual obligation, but because we acted as an effective unit, each benefiting from the other more than we put into the process. I was able to study much more efficiently the day prior, knowing that I would have an hour to discuss the cases the following morning.

In general, teams with voluntary participation can only hold together if each person receives more out of the team than he or she puts in. It's a simple balance of interests in life. A well functioning team will output more for its participants than the sum of the inputs, but this often takes a deliberate and coordinated effort. I'm therefore very grateful my team was able to achieve this early on. I believe it certainly enhanced my overall first year experience at HBS.