A pretty boring week, with a sparkle of excitement in Atlantic City

Turns out the last week has been pretty dull. On Wednesday afternoon, our group in Advertising Management presented our project on Guinness. It went very well, and it appears the professor was pleased with our work. He asked permission to use it for his internal classes at Johnson&Johnson. On the first day of class, he had brought some C2 Coke for sampling. I had brought a 6-pack of Guinness and asked his permission to serve them, but he did not want to take the risk to say yes so he sent me to the MBA office. The “right” person wasn’t there, so I was advised against it. At INSEAD, it would have never been an issue. I guess the Americans are more uptight about this kind of thing. We’re not talking about getting drunk in class, just a small sample… Frustrated, our team went out for Guinnesses at the New Deck Tavern after the presentation to celebrate our work well done.

On Thursday night, there was supposedly the largest Wharton party of the year: Wharton 54. It’s a disco-cowboy party that was hosted in a gay bar. Pretty fun stuff. There was over 1000 students present, so the place was completely packed.

On Friday, I worked on our Venture Capitalization Table from 9am to 3pm, and headed to Atlantic City with Nikhil and his wife from India, and Jon from the UK in a rental car. The one-hour drive was uneventful, and we arrived just before sunset. The place is a dump in dire need of refurbishing. We walked around the Trump Taj Mahal and the Showboat for about 1.5 hours, without betting (or losing) a single dollar. We then drove to the Borgata, Atlantic City’s newest and fanciest casino. We had dinner there. Jon and I shared a seafood platter with fresh oysters, clams and shrimp. I then had a nice rare sirloin, with a bucket of freshly grounded horseradish and a glass or two of Australian Shiraz. We then walked over to the roulette table, where we all employed very different strategies. I played my standard [1-2-3, 6-9, 8] and two more, but luck was not on my side, and I lost my entire bankroll of $60. Jon rapidly doubled his money playing red or black, and walked out at the right time. Nikhil was playing extremely conservatively, betting on two out of the three dozens at a time. As statistics would predict, he lost a third of his money. We drove back home that night.

On Saturday, I spent the entire day working on the Cap Table, a fairly sophisticated Excel-based model to predict the value of a venture capitalist’s investment. It takes into consideration liquidity preference, claw-back clauses, play or pay, various exit values etc etc etc. Sander and I volunteered to present our model to the entire class on Monday, so we spent most of Sunday playing with sensitivity analysis and making McKinsey-style PowerPoint slides. I learned quite a bit about the McKinsey way of presenting data.

On Monday morning, we presented our model, and the professor seemed very happy with our work. Throughout this week, I am preparing for interviews next week, as I am proud to report that I was invited for interviews with the top three strategy consulting firms. I have scheduled almost 10 practice case interviews, and prepared an 80-slide PowerPoint document highlighting in bullet points possible answers to possible interview questions. I intend to be as prepared as possible to secure at least one job offer. I will be interviewing with one office in Montreal, one in Amsterdam, and the third in a location to be determined, but probably Toronto. Let’s hope practice makes wonders!