London's calling

This week was the beginning of the courses organised by sections. The class is divided in 3 sections and I'm in section B, which -of course- stands for Best... :-)
We were also assigned to our study teams. My team is made of 9 people. Cool people I should say, from what I've seen so far. I'm sure there will be some tensions throughout the year, when the pressure heats up, but I'm pretty confident we will overcome them.
The teams are done for a case review purpose. Every day, we have 3 cases to prepare and we discuss those cases within the team before going to class and get exposed. Things really start on Monday with the first 3 real cases. Of course, you're evaluated on your participation, both quantitatively and qualitatively. At the end of the term, you get a grade between A and C. A is good, C sucks. And the attribution of the grades follows a bell curve, which means that there are 15% of As, 10% of Cs and the rest of Bs. So no matter how good you did, if 90% of the class did better, you get a C. It can sound unfair or make people think it will be more competitive, but actually it reflects quite accuratly what you find in any company. You're evaluated in comparison with your peers, not on an absolute scale.
Anyway, this was the descriptive part that is of interest for you only if you're a prospective student...

What we can very much feel so far is the emphasis put by the school -or the career services department, should I say- on Investment Banking and Consulting recruitment. We've had our first career workshop this week, with CV review sessions by Morgan Stanley and BCG. This is explainable by the fact that the recruitment process for the summer internships in these industries start very early. The obvious bias is that you hear about IB and Consulting all the time. We've had an investment banking seminar every day until 8pm, and it's very easy to forget why you were looking for in your MBA quest, and get tempted by the prestige and tons of cash that you make out of these firms. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying these are not top jobs if that's what you came for, but you might just go there for the wrong reasons.
I didn't know anything about IB, so I'm going to all the sessions to sessions to see if it's something for me or not. But the fact that I'm married and that I care about my work-life balance does not play in favor of IB...

I still don't have Internet at home (thanks to the Spanish cable company) so my posts are still scarce. Hopefully I will have it next week...
Next post will be more funny, I promise! Take care my friends!