Voices of the Whitman School of Management
“Corporate finance is the most helpful course I’ve taken, and it works especially well in my internship”, a second-year MBA told me last semester. Indeed, it covers quite a lot financial principles in the practical world, and also includes several cases; one group project and one simulation that help students to have a better command of the fundamental knowledge of corporate finance.
The online homework seems a little bit tough at the beginning, and I got many poor scores at first. This discouraged me a lot, to be honest. However, I do understand the ideas better through completing these assignments.
The group project topic we chose was “IPO analysis—Energy Industry in China”, which aimed to find the best time for a company to have its initial public offering in this specific industry.
Can you say pressure to perform on a big stage? This was our feeling leading up to the Key Bank Case Competition in Cleveland, OH on 2/24 – 2/25. This was the first case competition that myself and the other members of our team had participated in. While we had done dozens of case analysis and presented plenty of times in class, this was different.
While we did not place in the competition, we learned so much. We sat in on competitors presentations and saw different ways to convey our message. We talked to the judges afterwards and found out exactly what they liked and did not like about all the different school presentations. This feedback was useful as it helps us get better for the future.
As a Masters of Entrepreneurship student, I am always looking for experiences that are both meaningful and will help me learn real skills that I can use in the future. I was able to take advantage of one of these opportunities last semester at Syracuse in my Managing Product Development class. The main focus of this course was to learn how to develop a new product, navigate it through the product pipeline, and take it to launch. I felt confident that this was going to be a unique marketing class, but I was surprised at how interesting this class really was!
Instead of creating a theoretical project and taking that through the theoretical steps of the product pipeline, our groups got to develop a real product concept and pitch our final designs to the local company Gaylord, which specializes in library products. This opportunity made the project so much more interesting because Gaylord was seriously considering adding our product suggestions to their current inventory. We conducted our final presentations at Gaylord’s offices and with an audience of five Gaylord executives.