About MBA Math - Board of Advisors

The MBA Math Board of Advisors consists of current MBA students from top MBA programs who used the MBA Math course before starting business school. As experts in the MBA first year experience, they are uniquely positioned to provide guidance and feedback on priorities for improving and extending the MBA Math course.

Below, they introduce themselves, their pre-MBA efforts, and their first-year experience.

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Rick Bollar, Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, EMBA Class of 2008

Unlike the other advisors, I am enrolled in an Executive MBA program and I have been out of an academic environment for well over twenty years. While I did well in Fuqua’s quantitative assessment, I left my interview feeling as if I had holes in my experience and I wanted to make sure I had prepared as well as possible for the first semester.

Fuqua offers a quantitative readiness program and while it is good, I felt it needed to be augmented with additional drills, training and feedback - it also needed to be a program that could be done in short sessions from anywhere.

That’s how I came across MBA Math. MBA Math allows me to study and practice when I can between work and family obligations and I find that most of my work is done in 30 to 60 minute sessions. It’s easy to pop in and practice with just a few minutes time. In fact, most of my study time has been while I travel, from various hotel rooms.

I matriculate in May and I look forward to reporting my progress in the first quantitative classes.

Kate Canale, Darden School of Business at University of Virginia, Class of 2009

Michael Converse, Anderson School of Business at University of California at Los Angeles, Class of 2009

I have spent the last 8 years, after graduating from Harvard University, working in feature film production and development for Sony Pictures Entertainment and Universal Studios. Most recently, I completed an internship at Comerica Bank. Through my career in the entertainment industry, I gained experience solving unique business problems in a high pressure environment, through relationship building, content development, project management, financial analysis, and creative problem solving.

MBA Math was essential in preparing me for business school. After I passed out of the statistics requirement at Harvard University as an undergraduate I spent my time focused largely on humanities-based liberal arts courses. Additionally, I had been out of the academic world for close to 8 years before I decided to seek a graduate degree in business at UCLA Anderson. Needless to say it had been a long time between quantitative courses for me. MBA Math gave me a structured, go-at-your-own-pace outlet for me to prepare for the first semester of business school. The early preparation not only allowed me to avoid getting lost but also enabled me to understand and enjoy more of what was being taught. I, with my classmates, found the first semester at UCLA Anderson to be intensely academically rigorous and demanding. I know that being able to prepare for it in the spare time leading up to the fall allowed me to excel AND to enjoy the amazing experience.

Jelka Dasent, McCombs School of Business at University of Texas at Austin, Class of 2009

After college, I joined Price Waterhouse where I worked as an intern and pursued my chartered accountancy exams, graduating as a Chartered Accountant. I then went on to obtain 12 years of industry experience in the manufacturing and banking sectors, where I gained solid analytical and problem solving skills. I have been responsible for identifying and resolving financial reporting issues, as well as generating innovative methods to improve processes. Finally, before coming back to graduate school, I took on a team leadership role, in the restructuring and sale of the credit card and retail segments of the bank in which I was employed.

I am now in my second semester, as a first year MBA student, at The McCombs School of Business at University of Texas at Austin. The MBA Math internet tool was instrumental to my smooth transition to graduate school. After completing the first semester and doing very well, I was pleased with the time that I invested working through the respective mbamath modules. This internet tool allowed me to learn essential elements of the core that I was unfamiliar with and to revise topics that I had previous exposure to, all at my own pace.

After completing the first and debatably the most challenging semester, I would strongly recommend that all incoming MBA candidates use this tool both before school starts and certainly during the first year, as needed. I guarantee that students who use this user-friendly learning tool will be at a definite advantage if the essential quantitative skills are well known.

Lenika Dorman, McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, Class of 2008

I am a first year MBA student at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. I graduated from the University of California, San Diego in 2000 with a degree in Political Science with an emphasis in Pan American Studies. Upon graduating from the University of California at San Diego, my passion to enhance my global perspective motivated me to teach English in Prague, Barcelona and Madrid.

After over a year of working abroad, I was given the opportunity to join American International Group (AIG) as a Business Development Manager in Boston. With a strong desire to pursue a career in the marketing field, I left Spain to embark on a successful, 5 year career with AIG.

My marketing roles at AIG required sharp analytical skills. My responsibilities included; analyzing consumer purchasing trends and distribution models as well as conducing risk and financial analysis. While I had gained a great deal of quantitative experience throughout my professional career, I lacked the formal, quantitative training that was needed to succeed in a top MBA program.

MBA Math gave me a broad overview of the quantitative skills I would need to feel confident in the MBA environment. The program allowed me learn at my own pace and focus on the areas in which I had the most difficulty. The tutorials were very clear and the content was very applicable to my first year courses. MBA Math was an extremely efficient way for me to prepare for my first year of business school.

Jessica Grote, Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, Class of 2009

I am a second year MBA student at Washington University’s Olin Business School. I graduated with a degree in Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where I served as President of the Women in Architecture organization and studied abroad in Rome, Italy. Before returning to graduate school, I worked at an engineering firm and was highly involved in my community as a volunteer for the American Red Cross and United Way. Now at Olin, I am concentrating in Brand Management and Marketing Consulting/Strategy while serving as President of the Olin Marketing Association.

As an MBA student with a non-business background, I found MBA Math to be particularly helpful. The lessons gave me a comprehensive overview of the quantitative work that would be performed during the core curriculum of the program. MBA Math is unique in that it provides the flexibility to work at one’s own pace to meet personal objectives. It’s a great transition to graduate school.

Joshua Izzard, Graduate School of Business at University of Chicago, Class of 2009

I am a first year full-time MBA student at Chicago GSB. I hold undergraduate- and graduate-level degrees from the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory, which I completed as a concert pianist--so it is true that people from all professions do go to top MBA programs.

In addition to my extensive performing career, I have many years of experience in entrepreneurship, finance (most recently as an equities trader) and direct investment in Russia, where I spent nine years after leaving my native United States. While my education up to MBA level had been entirely musical, I had considerable exposure to quantitative material at work and was thus not too unprepared for the rigors of an MBA.

As I had thought of going into investment banking after business school, I thought that Chicago GSB would be an excellent school to go to based on both its reputation in finance and on its placement rates. I have been consistently surprised by the quantitative rigor of courses at GSB, and have needed Excel in all of my classes thus far. Calculus has proven necessary in exactly half of my courses, statistics in all courses (in some form or another). I plan to expand on these comments on the MBA Quant blog.

My experience during the first two quarters at Chicago GSB has been immeasurably enhanced by the fact that I spent the time necessary to go through all of the sections and problems on MBA Math. In fact, I continue to use it as a reference or reminder of certain things even though we have gone into greater depth long since. I cannot recommend this course enough.

David Landers, Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, Class of 2008

With the GMAT and admission processes behind me, I turned my focus to preparing for the first semester of B-school. Most blogs I came across from current students at top schools stressed tuning up quantitative skills.

Reading the BusinessWeek forum regularly, I came across several recommendations for a comprehensive solution: mbamath.com. Given that my work experiences as a dental hygienist were considered very non-traditional I knew the difficulty in accurately performing a self assessment.

I signed up for mbamath.com hoping that I could identify my weaknesses and find a few key takeaways from the web-based lessons. I started immediately and was pleased with the experience. The lessons were easy to understand, well organized, and very relevant.

Having just recently completed my first semester of B-school I can say that mbamath.com was an excellent preparation tool and an outstanding value. If you’re looking for an edge you won’t find a more efficient option.

Hugo Lorenson, Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto, Class of 2008

I started my studies at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management in September 2006. Before this, I had been a lawyer with the Province of Ontario's Legal Aid Plan for several years, where I provided legal services to disadvantaged persons. My previous work experiences included my working with a criminal defence firm, and as an analyst with Ontario's Ministry of the Attorney General.

Clearly, my professional background was entirely non-quantitative. After I decided to transition into the business world and enter business school, I wrote the GMAT as part of the application process. Although my overall score was serviceable, there was a large discrepency between my verbal and quantitiative scores. I quickly realized that if I wanted to do well at business school, I would need to brush up on my math skills.

Luckily, I came across MBA Math after Rotman accepted me and intensely prepared for my studies over the summer. The results have been very satisfying thus far. Not only do I understand economics, finance, accounting, and statistical concepts that otherwise would have confused me, I am doing quite well in all of the courses. MBA Math was instrumental in positioning me for success at business school and helping reduce a lot of the first semester anxieties that are common to first year students.

Chantrelle Nielsen, MIT Sloan School of Management, Class of 2008

Peter Park, Harvard Business School, Class of 2008

Prior to business school, I spent three years in Eldoret, Kenya, where I worked with Indiana and Moi Universities on the development of an HIV control system for western Kenya. I was responsible for ‘income security’ strategies for our HIV+ patient base, and linked sustainability measures with HIV care and prevention.

While my work in Eldoret certainly called for sound business intuition, I had historically been a poet of sorts with a mean non-profit bent. As an undergrad at Middlebury College, I studied religion and environmental studies, and after Midd, I spent a year on a non-profit fellowship at Indiana University called the Jane Addams - Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in Philanthropy. So by the time I had my admit letters for business school, while I understood the general feel for business, I still had hardly ever opened an Excel file, and terms such as ‘equity’ conjured up notions of poverty alleviation or social justice or something.

I am now a first-year student/RC at Harvard Business School, and through some smart pre-MBA prep, the transition into HBS life has been markedly smooth and my first semester went really well. While I used a number of resources during the summer, MBA Math was the cornerstone of my independent preparations for a number of reasons. For me, I found it to be the best way to become familiar with unfamiliar terminology early on, the best introduction to the process of solving problems in Excel, and perhaps most importantly, a painless and efficient way to learn the essentials. It was definitely a lot more effective than the books I bought over the summer but never quite got around to reading, and the reason is that MBA Math is structured in a way that makes it easy and effective to learn independently.

Anne Thompson, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, Class of 2009

As someone who hadn’t solved a math problem since high school I owe my admission to the Tuck Class of 2009 to MBA Math. During the admission process I relied on MBA Math as an additional indicator of my quantitative abilities. In preparing for the first year core curriculum at Tuck, going through MBA Math again provided me with the confidence and the necessary tools to stay up-to-speed with my classmates.

Professionally I have spent the past six years as a non-profit fundraiser – first for a small arts-based non-profit in New York City, and then on a larger scale as a major gift officer for Yale University, my own alma mater. In my job I relied on Excel more as a recording tool than as a partner in solving complex calculations and valuations. The MBA Math program helped ease me into the “language of business school” and allowed me to see the value in developing basic proficiency in key areas. This is not to say that the Tuck core curriculum was made easy after taking MBA Math, but rather it was made manageable and I had a familiarly with the material that allowed me to come up the learning curve faster during the term. MBA Math, and Professor Regan in particular have my full endorsement!

Xiaoming Alex Yang, Columbia Business School, Class of 2008

I read history in undergraduate and earned my master's degree in International Relations. Pursuing an MBA after nearly 7 years' absence from classroom environment, I am kind of a poet for the business school.

Having worked in the Financial Institutions Department with the Bank of China for the past 6 years, I will soon attend the Columbia Business School. As a relationship manager, I have a good mastery of soft skillls and definitely need to sharpen my quant skills and get prepared for relevant knowledge to hit the ground running at my dream school.

To this end, the MBA Math online learning tool really gives me an opportunity to catch up and crack the nuts.
Comfort and confidence both build up in the process of self-paced learning.

Click here to view past members of the MBA Math Board of Advisors