admits weekend, assignments, battle of the quants...

Well, these days I can't complain that I don't know what to do with my time! 2 weeks to go till the summer internship and there is a LOT left to do: an economics group paper, two individual economics assignments, three final exams, one finance assignment due tomorrow morning, also another accounting assignment due next Monday, and in between I'm going to Germany for 5 days, and my bank for the summer has sent me some online trainings on FX, derivatives etc. to do over the next days.

There is a lot more going on. Tomorrow, the investment management club has invited the CEO of Frontier Capital to speak on Asset Allocation, and this is followed by a end of year party of the Women's Football Club. On Wednesday, my study group is going out for dinner with partners to celebrate the end of the year and also because we still need to drink that Veuve Cliquot we won in the economics debate a few weeks back! On Thursday morning, I might go into the City to meet my former EM (project manager) who has also since left McKinsey but is coming to London for a business meeting. Then I need to head to the airport. I got a very cheap flight to my home town, 50 GBP return!! The bad thing about such a price is that it influences my decision-making in other areas. We have a London Business Summer Ball in July, and one ticket costs 80 GBP!!!! I simply refuse to buy a ticket for one evening with a bit of food and drink that costs more than a return ticket to Berlin or Rome! In the end, we are all students, unfortunately some people forget that not all of their classmates are swimming in dollars (and much less in pounds ;-) ).

But of course, you all want to know about admits weekend. Well, probably the admits should be a better source of information, too bad Rusgirl wasn't there to tell the story! The only picture I have from the weekend is from the Women in Business brunch, and there is not a single admit on the picture :-). It's me with two of the more active Women in Business club leaders :-). Maybe the picture sums up my mood: I had a bit of a deja vu, it was very similar to last year's admits weekend, but I was in a different role this time, and that was very weird for me. I somehow thought "what are you guys doing here? My first year isn't over yet! It's too early! I'm not a 2nd year student yet!". I wouldn't say I was envious though, because though it's very exciting, I also like to have close friends already, rather than hectically roaming around looking for like-minded people.

From what I heard from talking to admits, they really liked it and I think all of them were sure they were going to come to London. There were lots of waitlisted people as well and I wish them luck! I guess it helps to come to admits weekend, but then not many waitlisted people make it into the class, so it's not an easy situation. But there were also many happy people who are just about to leave their jobs and move to London, and that is indeed an exciting situation to be in!

Another great event I attended today was the briefing for the Creativity and Personal Mastery Class with Srikumar Rao, it was great, and I'm now more sure than ever that I want to take this class. He talked about the course, then some of his current students talked, and afterwards we went to the Windsor pub (which the admits will know very well by now!) and talked some more, it was fantastic. I hope to take it next term. I'm not too worried about the pre-reading one has to do, because I was so enthusiastic when I heard about the course last year that I already read the course outline, Rao's book "Are you Ready to Succeed?" and another brilliant book on the syllabus, "FLOW", which is by the way one of the best and most helpful non-fiction books I have ever read, so at least I don't start from zero :-).

And it doesn't stop there, another great thing happened today! The investment management club was approached by the Battle of the Quants Conference, asking for 5 students to help them out with registration and in return they could stay the whole day at this conference which usually costs over $1,000 to attend. The email came early this morning and luckily I checked my email shortly before class, so I was one of the first to reply and will get to attend the conference next week! The keynote speaker is Nassim Taleb, who I hear is very entertaining and knowledgeable. The main topic is the whole "human vs. machine" debate in trading - can quant models replace or outperform people? Looking at Renaissance Capital's and DE Shaw's returns, it definitely looks like it, though obviously you will always need people to program the systems. Next week I will write about all my impressions from the conference for sure. I just need to find the time!