My classes

After harassing the ISB bidding administration all this week and several emails between myself, Haas and ISB, I finally have my classes situated. I'm required to take 4 courses each in Term 7 and 8 here at ISB in order to reach 10 units Haas equivalency when I return to the U.S.

Though I really tried not to, I did end up having to compromise slightly on some of my wishlist courses to fulfill my units requirements. I say slightly because I worked with the administration made sure that at least I didn't end up with classes that I hate. Here is what I'll be taking:

- Database Marketing: Sounded like a good opportunity to use my Excel skills and push them further by learning a new tool, XL Miner. It's actually more of a data mining class than marketing, in my opinion.

- Change Management: I had thought I would choose between this and another course I was interested in (Managing Complexity, see more below) but this one had more seats open! An Organizational Behavior topic, we're going to do some simulations situations. Lecture has been a bit boring but the topic seems very interesting so we'll see how this second week goes.

- Marketing of High-Tech Products and Innovations: taught by a Professor from SF State Univ! I come all the way to India to take a class from a local professor! Sanjit Sengupta seems like a very nice professor though - very interested in his students, and I'm not a huge Tech-phile, so I figured it will be good for me to take this course to get better exposure and understanding of Technology since I'm working in the Bay Area.

- Marketing Strategy: This was the course I had to compromise on. Originally, I didn't want to take this class because it's similar to my core course at Berkeley. But, the cases are slightly different and professors are from Wharton/ISB, so I figure it will be a different perspective. I'm sure there will be some crossover, but it's better than no class at all.

One class I really wanted to take and was unique to ISB was "Managing Complexity." It's a course that sounds like a cross between Project Management and Change Management, and it's taught by a guy who works at NASA. After attending class the first day, the professor was clearly an interesting and captivating one, and I knew I wasn't going to get in because everyone was going to stay. Maybe I'll just attend a few classes, if my time permits.

So, that's how it all fell out, almost all marketing classes. It's think it's ok though because it's probably good for me to take marketing since I work in Excel all day long, and this way I can be a more "well-rounded" MBA. And, marketing classes are generally easier for me than highly quantative courses and this will free up more time for exploring India.

But I'm looking more forward to Term 8, which has some really interesting topics (Outsourcing, Microfinance, Indian Financial Systems) and which I will make sure I don't have the painful bidding problems I did in Term 7!