American universities

Schumpeter, at The Economist, has an interesting article on the state of American universities titled “Declining by degree“. He acknowledges that American universities are admired worldwide for a number of reasons including the number of Nobel laureates employed, quantity of citations in academic papers, etc. He however draws comparison with the US auto majors who were once admired and then fell down badly and asks if that could happen to American universities. PMBA tutors please take note

Schumpeter draws from both right and left wing authors on what could be ailing the universities and cites three areas of concern: rising prices, declining productivity and administrative bloat.

Rising prices is one that we all see and can feel. Declining productivity and administrative bloat are not obvious to us but are of concern. If we are to stay in the forefront of education, we must watch out and not get complacent.

PMBA tutors please take note.

MBA Student Loans – beware!

Mint.com has an excellent article on student loans. It highlights a few WSJ articles on this subject too.

The key take away is that student loans have now surpassed credit card loans. So please manage them just like you would any other debt. Mint.com has a few suggestions. Go to a college you can afford! Take the core classes from a community college and transfer credits go to a brand name college for the later part. What was shocking (and I too did not know this) was that these loans have some ugly fine print. Heavy fine print for missing payments, nuisance calls from debt collectors, etc. What is appalling is that these student loans live on even after a student dies. The co-signers need to pay the loan off! You cant even get this debt off in bankruptcy!!

Read this article. Its worth it. Take the news out and tell your friends about it.

Here is an additional tip from us as MBA tutors who can assist you with business plans. Just like you would write a business plan when you think about starting a new business, write up a plan for your MBA idea. Consider the total cost of getting an MBA at the schools of your choice. Make sure you try the full time ones, part time, distance eduction, local colleges, top tier, etc. Compare the cost and the payoffs, expected salaries, how you will finance them, etc. Treat it like a business decision not an emotional one.

MBA applications: Quality vs. Speed/time

Today’s NYT has an interesting piece on college applications. It is essentially highlighting the importance of submitting a high quality and thoughtful application that truly reflects who you are and your desires and ambitions. That is way more important than getting your application in early.

So as you go about getting your applications ready, take the time and effort to do it well. Dont rush it. Be mindful of the deadlines and plan ahead. Feel free to call one of our MBA tutors should you need assistance. It is helpful not to have to wait till the last round in business schools as one of the factors the b-school admissions officers consider is the mix of profiles in the class.  But quality still trumps speed. Let your application truly reflect who you are. You will come across as more credible when the impression you make in the interviews is consistent with your admission applications.

Financial modeling: Modeling time

Modeling time in excel is quite advanced. The list of features includes
  • time
  • day
  • hour
  • minute
  • second
  • now
You can add or subtract dates, find the number of working days etc. These are however standard commands. It does take some ingenuity to figure out how you can mix and match these to get the output you need when modeling.
How can I figure out the number of weekdays between two days in a year?
Recently, we encountered a challenging modeling issue. Output was in seconds and in the time format. Comparing performances and graphing was difficulty. To work around this we converted all the time into seconds using the hour, minute and second feature and then did the analysis using seconds to measure all data points. This simple solutions worked beautifully!

Learn financial modeling techniques with us.  Our financial modeling tutors are MBAs or CPAs and can help you understand the process of laying out your financial model step by step and help you learn how to build a financial model from scratch. If you are writing a business plan or an idea you are evaluating, understand the financial implications by building an spreadsheet model.

Economic Recovery

Timothy F. Geithner has a piece on the status of the economic recovery. Being the secretary of the US treasury, his piece would be the optimistic view of the treasury but still one worth reading. Our economics tutors can assist you with both macro economics and microeconomics if you are looking to understand the economy in more detail. His highlights from the piece are:

  • Exports are booming because American companies are very competitive and lead the world in many high-tech industries.
  • Private job growth has returned — not as fast as we would like, but at an earlier stage of this recovery than in the last two recoveries. Manufacturing has generated 136,000 new jobs in the past six months.
  • Businesses have repaired their balance sheets and are now in a strong financial position to reinvest and grow.
  • American families are saving more, paying down their debt and borrowing more responsibly. This has been a necessary adjustment because the borrow-and-spend path we were on wasn’t sustainable.
  • The auto industry is coming back, and the Big Three — Chrysler, Ford and General Motors — are now leaner, generating profits despite lower annual sales.
  • Major banks, forced by the stress tests to raise capital and open their books, are stronger and more competitive. Now, as businesses expand again, our banks are better positioned to finance growth.
  • The government’s investment in banks has already earned more than $20 billion in profits for taxpayers, and the TARP program will be out of business earlier than expected — and costing nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars less than projected last year.

Despite this optimism, I am glad to hear him say that he aware “that these signs of strength in parts of the economy are cold comfort to those Americans still looking for work and to those industries, like construction, hit hardest by the crisis.”

Click here to read the entire article in the NYT.

MBAs Measuring Success

As MBA tutors we often get to advise a number of our students on various life decisions. We enjoy and value this opportunity as it impacts our students lives far more than their ability to understand NPV or cash flow statements (which by itself is a valuable skill)!

Renowned professor and thinker Clayton M. Christensen has written an excellent article on measuring success for the July-August 2010 HBR magazine.   He was addressing an HBS class on how to apply some of his work on their personal lives. Excellent article! Thank you HBR and thank you Clayton!

A must read article on measuring success.

MBA tutoring for students in NY!

Today’s NYT has an article on students in NY. It talks about the unique challenges students face studying in NY.

One of the challenges that students face is the feeling of being alone. The article quotes Hanna Wolfe as saying

“It’s so anonymous,” she said, “that it just feels good to reach out to someone”

and so she likes to talk to the bus driver each day!

We at GraduateTutor.com just dropped in to say that we enjoy meeting you and look forward to our tutoring sessions with NY MBA students and other graduate students or executives who want to learn. Welcome to NY!

Living in NY can be a challenge. But studying in NY need not be a challenge with private tutoring from GraduateTutor.com

Data, Models and Decisions

As an attempt to make learning easier and enjoyable, Graduate Tutor had decided to include Open Courseware (OCW) programs into its wide range of topics for homework help and tutoring!

In the recent past Graduate Tutor had included a couple of topics from Sloan School of Business into its array of topics for tutoring and homework help. We are happy to formally announce the inclusion of Sloan School of Business’ ‘Data, Models and Decisions-15.060 (Fall 2007)’, into the list of OCW programs we tutor.  The operation research tutor group and the statistics tutor group will provide the tutoring support for this course.

MIT’s Open courseware is a major contribution to people who wish to learn and we wish to make it enjoyable!  Graduate Tutor’s expert tutors consist of MBA, CPAs or CFAs with remarkable tutoring skills in accounting and finance as seen in business schools. Currently our tutors cater to students from a number of top business schools and we are confident with their capability to tutor MIT’s open courseware (OCW)

‘Data, Models, and Decisions-15.060 (Fall 2007)’ is just one of the many topics that we plan to provide tutoring in. We hope to widen our spectrum and provide tutoring support to more programs included in MIT’s open courseware.

Enjoy learning and look forward to it!

MBA tutor: Lessons for MBA From a Fishing Village

If you havent read this tale below, you must. Of course, as MBA tutors, most of us at Graduate Tutor are MBAs, CPA or CFAs and have the attitude of the MBA in the story! I spent some time thinking about this story. What do you think about it!?

A management consultant, on holiday in a African fishing village, watched a little fishing boat dock at the quayside. Noting the quality of the fish, the consultant asked the fisherman how long it had taken to catch them.

“Not very long.” answered the fisherman.

“Then, why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more?” asked the consultant.

The fisherman explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family.

The consultant asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”

“I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, have an afternoon’s rest under a coconut tree. In the evenings, I go into the community hall to see my friends, have a few beers, play the drums, and sing a few songs….. I have a full and happy life.” replied the fisherman.

The consultant ventured, “I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you…… You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat. With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have a large fleet. Instead of selling your fish to a middleman, you can negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to a city here or maybe even in the United Kingdom, from where you can direct your huge enterprise.”

“How long would that take?” asked the fisherman.

“Oh, ten, maybe twenty years.” replied the consultant.

“And after that?” asked the fisherman.

“After that? That’s when it gets really interesting,” answered the consultant, laughing, “When your business gets really big, you can start selling shares in your company and make millions!”

“Millions? Really? And after that?” pressed the fisherman.

“After that you’ll be able to retire, move out to a small village by the sea, sleep in late every day, spend time with your family, go fishing, take afternoon naps under a coconut tree, and spend relaxing evenings having drinks with friends…”

~author unknown

Here is what I thought about this!

  • Its wonderful to know what we want. This is however not very easy as we have to remove external influences that create needless desires within us.
  • I truly wonder if life will be so simple and if it will stay this way when everything around you is progressing down another direction.

What ever conclusions you reach, we must all agree that it is important to try and figure out what we really want with our MBAs and our lives in general and aim towards it. Otherwise we will spend our lives climbing up the wrong ladder and on reaching the top feel that we have waster our lives.

Financial risk: Tutoring still needed!?

Have we learnt our lessons from the economic crisis? Or do we still need more financial risk tutoring? What can MBA programs do to promote an understanding of financial risk in MBA students who will lead in the future ?

The economic crisis over the last two years has seen plenty of paper, ink and blog space being used to point fingers at almost everyone! Governments, political parties, organizations ( both private and public), individuals, leaders, society, habits, et al have been accused of contributing to the crisis. Economist.com has an interesting take on financial risk. In a special report on financial risk Matthew Valencia talk about various views. Read it in detail.

Much has been written and talked about. Have we learnt our lessons? Or do we still need more financial risk tutoring? I believe we still need more financial risk tutoring. Creative financial accounting, fancy economic models and financial modeling, etc are not the solution. Business schools must make financial risk management an integral part of their MBA programs.