Quantitative Calisthenics: Shape Up For Class

I started the quant skills workshop at last year's Forte MBA Women's Conference by stating that incoming students should understand the quantitative foundations of the broadening credit crisis because it would affect their summer internship and post-MBA recruiting environment regardless of whether they were interested in financial services.

That seemed to many at the time to be a bit of a stretch but became ever more obvious as the months have passed. Certainly, no one would doubt the assertion's truth for this year's incoming MBA students.

Not only is the ongoing credit crisis of global importance, its quantitative foundations are eminently understandable. I have designed the two-hour workshop like an MBA class in the sense that participants should devote an hour or two of advance preparation using the materials at www.mbamath.com/events/forte.htm so that we can extend and apply that preparation in the workshop.

The workshop won't make you an expert but it will highlight the quantitative mechanics underlying bond valuation, financial leverage, securitization, and balance sheet implosions. You'll also get a preview of the quantitative reasoning you'll need in your upcoming MBA classes.

This post and the upcoming workshop come as I preside over an annual summer surge of pre-MBA quant skills preparation at MBA Math, which you can see in the image of last year's activity.



Not everyone needs additional quantitative preparation. But for those who do, be aware that your time is limited and you'll be sitting in fall term classes before you know it.

I look forward to meeting many of you at this year's conference.

Peter Regan created the self-paced, online MBA Math quantitative skills course and teaches live MBA courses at Dartmouth (Tuck), Duke (Fuqua), and Cornell (Johnson).