Round 1 Bidding Results

Round 1 bidding has ended, and I got every course I wanted in all the sections I wanted. This should come as no huge surprise. I only had to take 4 courses, had a full 500 points and selected courses that weren't very popular / had low bid requirements. I also changed my bid. Rather than bid on Options, I decided to do Case Analysis and Presentation, an intensive course, with a team I think is mostly JD/MBAs who wanted a finance person on their team so I happily joined. I'm hoping that I can overload to take Options as well.

I've heard others were not so lucky. Quite a few people I know (a small non-scientific sample) did not get the courses they wanted or had to get slotted into a different section. I'm guessing this is because they bid for highly competitive courses which cost something absurd like Top Management Perspective (TMP, for 452 min to 548 median) or Value Investing (between 340 min and 360 median). This is in the context of being allocated an initial 100 points per course and with some courses going for 0.

Top Management Perspective is highly coveted (especially by would-be consultants) because there is a lot of meetings with CEOs and other top execs. Value investing is popular because of the annual trip to see Warren Buffet (Caution for anyone interested in this course: The trip could potentially be cancelled at anytime if you notice and read the fine print). Many people I know take Value Investing so that they can "get a photo with Warren that they can use in their promotional material when they start their own hedge funds".

On a modeling note, I'm pretty happy with how my bidding model worked. It predicted that certain courses would be over subscribed and calculated a premium factor for how to bid. For instance, Corp Fin, a normally non-competitive course (three sections of 33 people each), had a minimum bid of 50 (historically 0), meaning that some people were excluded. That means if you mis-read the historic bidding data and thought that you could save some points by bidding 0 (a common strategy for people saving points for TMP and Value Investing) you would have been left out in the cold. I'm thinking of posting my bidding formula later for calculating bid premiums for courses. I'd make some tweaks so that the formulas can be for more general use by students. It benefits everyone if we bid economically rationally.