Friday, December 12, 2003

Where I stand now can be summarized in one word: WEEKEND.

During the MAC Exam, there must have been some really tricky word because a whole continuous string of French people walked down to check something in the dictionary made available by the proctor. They probably also all got to that question at the same time. At times, the MAC Exam felt like MacDonald's as I was surrounded by munching and crunching noises. Some people just cannot get away without food for three hours.
What else can I say about this exam? I finished it - although I am totally unsure about the validity of any numerical result that I have written down. Like the Price and Market exam, I must have swum in ignorance dressed up in realistic thinking. The general feeling is that it was quite bad for most people, so I am not too hopeful. One peek at the newspaper reminds me that it is only an exam. Nothing to really worry about.
On the surface, it was a very fair exam, all questions addressed points that we had covered in class; some transfer pricing decisions to achieve goal congruence, some product portfolio decision and an illustration that product profitability cannot be completely assessed by just any costing system. Some activity-based, practical capacity, proportonality and death spiral inter-twined with a touch of subtility in how the numbers were presented to get to actual capacity, Overhead rates, etc...

OB Exam: I will not spend any time mulling over it, as my condition of facilitator, random help and conclusion writer did not allow for all perspectives. One of my groupmate has perfectly summarized this exam in the e-mail header that she fired to all of us:
I quote: "final copy - nice one team. never enjoyed an exam so much"
It brought back vivid industry memories though...

PoM Exam: from everybody's account, it was an easy exam - which is no good news for anyone worrying about the z-curve. There again, only what we covered in class in its plainest form. Quality Control, Supply Chain and Inventory Management and Process Improvement, Little's Law, Wait Times, etc...etc...

As my housemate would put it, the most important characteristic of this week's exams is that they are all past.
Finance and Strategy left over for me. I got invited to an accreditation dinner on Monday night, whatever that is...The section is meeting for drinks tonight. I might extract my brain from heavy option payoff diagrams and pay a visit to this creperie.

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