You’re probably wondering what Super Round is, so I’ll give a short description. There are several classes and professors at the GSB that are extremely popular and get oversubscribed each year. Because our registration order is determined by a lottery process, there is a chance that people could leave here without getting one of these popular courses/professors unless the Academic operations office intervenes. So, they run a process called the Super Round, in which we are given access to a list of popular courses for the three quarters of our second year and get to rank the 10 class sections that we most want to be in. Once we’ve all selected our preferences, a lottery process is run to assign each of us a number and each student is allocated two of their ten preferenced sections. This way, Academic Operations ensures that most, if not all, MBA2′s can take at least two of their top choice popular classes and don’t have to worry about getting shut out.
Well, the results for the Super Round came out today and I’ve got mixed feelings about how mine turned out. I’d ranked a “Managing Growing Enterprises” course taught by Prof. Irv Grosbeck in the Spring as my #1 choice and a “Formation of New Ventures” course taught by Prof. Garth Saloner in the Fall as my #2 choice because these are two of the most relevant courses to people who want to learn about entrpereneurship and early-stage company leadership and I was told that the former serves as a perfect follow-up to the latter. Also, Profs Grosbeck and Saloner are the strongest entrepreneurship and strategy professors (respectively) in the GSB. I didn’t know whether I’d get both classes, but I had my hopes set high. I only ended up getting the #2 choice class becuase Grosbeck’s joint went really early in the process. I’m happy with the Saloner class though and I’m looking forward to it because my man Detavio told me that he did a great job of teaching his section in the core Strategy class. As my second Super Round class, I got a “Leadership Perspectives” class taught by Profs. O’Reilly and Peterson (Peterson was just awarded the 2004-2005 GSB Distinguished Teacher Award) that is a relatively new course developed by these professors and a team of 13 folks from the Class of 2005. The focus of this course is to teach students about leadership and the different sacrifices, insights, and motivations that go into being an effective leader. Overall, I am cool with the Super Round joints I got and I’ll just have to cross my fingers in hopes of being able to get into one of the other professors’ sections of “Managing growing enterprises” in the Spring quarter.
One other aspect of registration that was announced today was the allocations for September session, in which a set of classes are held concurrently with the MBA 1 preterm in the middle of September. There will be about 15 seminars held during this time along with a 2-week session of Interpersonal Dynamics, also known as “Touchy Feely”, which usually takes an entire quarter to complete. I have been looking forward to signing up for the September session version of Touchy Feely since the start of the winter quarter because I knew that getting those 4-units out of the way early would make the upcoming fall quarter much easier on me. Plus, I didn’t want to have to take the class during one of the regular quarters because it takes up a lot of time and requires a mandatory weekend retreat that will eat into my time to study for other classes. I thought that my chances of getting the Sept session class were so good that I made plans for my summer break around it (determining my internship end date, not trying to do a split summer with a second internship, and not signing up for a GMIX), but, when the results came out, I’d gotten a big “HELLZ NAW!!!” on that joint. Basically, there were so many people who wanted to do the class during that session that they couldn’t accomodate everyone and I got the bad word. I think the official word is that all of us will be put on a waitlist for the class, but I’m pretty sure that no spots are going to open up. to make things worse, I didn’t sign up for any of the 2-unit September session seminars because I was so sure I’d get the Touchy Feely class. I will probalby sign up for two of those seminars because I want to get the 4-units knocked out in September and I’ll get a chance to get some extra learning in, but it’s hard not to be disappointed at how it all turned out.
Well, the results for the Super Round came out today and I’ve got mixed feelings about how mine turned out. I’d ranked a “Managing Growing Enterprises” course taught by Prof. Irv Grosbeck in the Spring as my #1 choice and a “Formation of New Ventures” course taught by Prof. Garth Saloner in the Fall as my #2 choice because these are two of the most relevant courses to people who want to learn about entrpereneurship and early-stage company leadership and I was told that the former serves as a perfect follow-up to the latter. Also, Profs Grosbeck and Saloner are the strongest entrepreneurship and strategy professors (respectively) in the GSB. I didn’t know whether I’d get both classes, but I had my hopes set high. I only ended up getting the #2 choice class becuase Grosbeck’s joint went really early in the process. I’m happy with the Saloner class though and I’m looking forward to it because my man Detavio told me that he did a great job of teaching his section in the core Strategy class. As my second Super Round class, I got a “Leadership Perspectives” class taught by Profs. O’Reilly and Peterson (Peterson was just awarded the 2004-2005 GSB Distinguished Teacher Award) that is a relatively new course developed by these professors and a team of 13 folks from the Class of 2005. The focus of this course is to teach students about leadership and the different sacrifices, insights, and motivations that go into being an effective leader. Overall, I am cool with the Super Round joints I got and I’ll just have to cross my fingers in hopes of being able to get into one of the other professors’ sections of “Managing growing enterprises” in the Spring quarter.
One other aspect of registration that was announced today was the allocations for September session, in which a set of classes are held concurrently with the MBA 1 preterm in the middle of September. There will be about 15 seminars held during this time along with a 2-week session of Interpersonal Dynamics, also known as “Touchy Feely”, which usually takes an entire quarter to complete. I have been looking forward to signing up for the September session version of Touchy Feely since the start of the winter quarter because I knew that getting those 4-units out of the way early would make the upcoming fall quarter much easier on me. Plus, I didn’t want to have to take the class during one of the regular quarters because it takes up a lot of time and requires a mandatory weekend retreat that will eat into my time to study for other classes. I thought that my chances of getting the Sept session class were so good that I made plans for my summer break around it (determining my internship end date, not trying to do a split summer with a second internship, and not signing up for a GMIX), but, when the results came out, I’d gotten a big “HELLZ NAW!!!” on that joint. Basically, there were so many people who wanted to do the class during that session that they couldn’t accomodate everyone and I got the bad word. I think the official word is that all of us will be put on a waitlist for the class, but I’m pretty sure that no spots are going to open up. to make things worse, I didn’t sign up for any of the 2-unit September session seminars because I was so sure I’d get the Touchy Feely class. I will probalby sign up for two of those seminars because I want to get the 4-units knocked out in September and I’ll get a chance to get some extra learning in, but it’s hard not to be disappointed at how it all turned out.
oops…bummer, isnt it?
the unpredictability of life never ceases to surprise us, does it ?
maybe things are waiting to work out for the best !