davidret

Welcome to the first days of preterm at Wharton where you are thrown into a pool of 800 unknown people (your future classmates).

Nevertheless, if you are a Lauder Student, on your first day you already know 65 people.  This saves you the embarrassment of introducing someone whose name you just learnt (and forgot) to someone you met 15 minutes ago (and whose name you also forgot). As long as you do this excercise with a Lauderite involved you can only miss 50% of the names. Introducing Latino, Japanese and Chinese people to your other Lauder buddies in their respective language tracks really helps amalgamate this group of 800 people way faster. It also helps as a contact point between cohorts (the 2009 class is divided into 4 clusters with 3 cohorts each, tagged with the letters A to L).

The first week of preterm is all about understanding how Wharton works. You have to do financial aid, health care and other administrative paperwork. The main event immediately following the first week is the math test (well after all it is Wharton). You are required to have a basic knowledge of exponentials, logarithms and compounded rates. You have 2 opportunities to pass it (Lauder takes this test in May so technically you have 4).

The next step in preterm is deciding what you already know to skip "Core Classes". Core Classes are meant to give an MBA student the basic knowledge a manager will require in the future. Even if you love finance and that is your future you may end up needing basic Marketing or Operations (with their elegant undying charm of linear optimization, as the Wharton school Vice Dean Anjani Jain likes to call it) concepts down the road.

You take different level classes during preterm depending on your core needs beginner, intermediate, advanced, waiver exam or none. You can waive the Core classes by credentials or by exams. The consensus was that if you really have to study hard for something you have never seen before it is probably a good enough reason just to take the class. Even if it's a basic course it goes pretty fast and following electives tend to be linked to the concepts in basic courses.

The other part of preterm is taking mini lectures, trading simulations, communication and computing workshops, cultural activities (Phillies Game, museums, independence hall) and career management presentations (which includes industry chats).  Mini lectures give you the opportunity to explore the whole range of subjects Wharton offers and act as a Movie preview for certain classes. For example, I didn't realize all the research and interesting mathematical approaches Wharton was doing in Media and Entertainment.

Except for career management events, you have to buy them in an auction. "The auction" is where people spend their preterm points as wisely as the can to get into the events they want. It is an exercise of utility maximization given how much you care (in points) for some event. It also helps as training for the real auction where you choose your elective courses.

Students are also really pro active and I got to go Water River rafting to better know my class.

Preterm ends with the Learning team retreat. A two day camping experience where you get to bond with your cohort, learn about team work and leadership, and get to know your Learning Team. Your learning team is the group of 5 to 6 students with whom you will be working together in the core courses. Even people who didn't like camping loved the experience. This opportunity finally let me know the names of my entire cohort (as well as to know other people in other cohorts).

The next blog will be about the first day of classes.