My grades

OK, first a few words about the Oxford random number generator. First off, the percentage range is radically shifted. In the US, anything over 70% is generally considered a pass and anything over 90% is an A. In Oxford, the pass line is 50% and anything over 70% earns you a distinction (and this is a real challenge, not the easy A grade inflation of many American universities).

However, grades are also adjusted to a curve, so the actual performance band is narrower still. The lowest passing average for the MBA for the past seven years is 52% and the highest is 69%, with an overall average of 61%. Thus, the entire range from failure to exceptional performance is only 17%, versus 30% in the US. Grades roughly fit a normal distribution, so the vast bulk of MBAs cluster around the 61% average. So, how did I do?

72 Decision Science (distinction!)
59 Developing Managers
66 Finance I
71 Financial Reporting (distinction!)
67 Managerial Economics
68 Strategy
66 Entrepreneurial Project (counts as two courses)
66 Entrepreneurial Project
63 Finance II
69 Financial Management (so close...)
65 International Business
55 Marketing
59 Operations Management
68 Tech Strategy

My average is 65.29%, so I'm well above the 61% class average. Translating this to an American GPA is quite tricky though, since I must assume a normal probability distribution as well as the number of standard deviations encompassed by the range of scores (ie, how much are scores clustered around the center). Crunching the numbers under different assumptions, I get GPAs of 3.52, 3.65, 3.76, and 3.84.

Thus, my best guess GPA is 3.69, the average of my four scenarios. Under all of my assumptions, though, I'm comfortably within the top quartile of my class. Not bad, but definately a change from the American system, where I got a solid 3.95 during my business courses.

Oxford MBA college selection advice

To the 2008 MBA class:

Congratulations on your admission to the Oxford MBA! I'm sure you'll find your year here to be both challenging and immensely rewarding.

I know how stressful it can be to select a college and to make arrangements for life in Oxford, and I hope that I can be of some use in easing your transition. As for selecting a college, I understand how frustrating the apparent lack of clear information can be. Fortunately, I can provide some guidance on the most important facets of the selection criteria.

Surprisingly, there isn't a significant difference between the various college. All of them have long and prestigious histories, grand and inspiring buildings, and a wonderfully diverse student body. So, how to choose? The factors that seem to matter most to MBAs are the size of the college, location, and the accommodations they offer.

My college is Keble, one of the largest college in Oxford. We have 435 undergrads and 226 grad students. Amongst the grad students, we have 14 MBAs. Thus, our MCR tends to be fairly lively, with lots of pub crawls, movie nights, and other activities.

The college is located fairly close to the center of Oxford. The city is small enough where you can reasonably walk from one end to the other, but some colleges, such as Templeton, are far away from the city center. This map offers some good guidance: http://www.ox.ac.uk/aboutoxford/maps/colls.shtml. The business school is right next to the train station on the far left, and it's about a 15 minute walk from Keble to the business school.

As for MBA accommodation, I think Keble has a distinct advantage. MBAs are housed at Acland, a former hospital converted to graduate dorms. On the map, we're right across the street from Green College. The dorms and clean and well appointed. Each room has an ensuite bath, a bed, desk, bookshelf, and wardrobe closet. There are several large, communal kitchens and regular housekeeping service.

Realistically, most MBAs spend the majority of their time at the business school as the intensity of the MBA program often prevents MBAs from becoming deeply involved in their college life. I rowed for Keble the first term and some row throughout the year, but MBAs often run into serious time constraints, especially during Hillary term. The common refrain at Keble is that the grads see the MBAs for the first few weeks, then we disappear for the rest of the year. Thus, the choice of college is a lot less important than many admits realize.

I hope this is useful in your college decision. Once again, congratulations on your admission to the Said Business School!

A good general contractor for Vancouver, Washington

Just a shameless plug for a great local company. James at Elite Construction, (360) 798-4007 or (360) 834-6103 is awesome. He redid the roof at my mom's house and repaired some structural carpenter ant damage. His crew is dependable and experienced, and I'd highly recommend Elite Construction for your general contractor needs.

AppleSoft and TED

So what's up with Apple? For a company with the public image of being the David versus Microsoft's Goliath, are they really that different?

Take iTunes and .mp3s; my fresh out of the box Nano skips when playing variable bit rate .mp3s. Ditto with the Shuffle. These are the same .mp3s that worked great on my previous Mini. After some extensive research, I've concluded that Apple has known about the problem for a long time, but has done nothing to correct it as a way to drive users towards it's proprietary AAC format. So, I've had to recode all of my songs into unprotected AACs, and now they work fine. However, this has been a horrible experience and makes me very leery of buying an iPod in the future. I love my iPod and iTunes is great, but this kind of explicit lock-in is stifling and claustrophobic. At least Microsoft's Zune can play my friggin .mp3s (and unprotected AACs for that matter).

Next case, iTunes for Linux. Why does this not exist? I'm been eyeballing Ubuntu (www.ubuntu.com) for my next OS, but this may be a deal breaker. My theory is that Apple wants OSX to be seen as the only viable alternative to Windows and it's leveraging its killer ap to attract customers through a halo effect while locking out Linux. Ditto for the lack of Zune for Linux. Lame.

Lastly, Apple's new 'DRM free' iTunes tracks come with a watermark of your name and email address. This makes sense to a certain degree. DRM has been a complete failure and watermarking allows copyright holders to track the pirating of their material. However, Apple wasn't transparent about this technology with the public, and thus looks more and more like big brother than a hammer toting rebel.

Meanwhile, The Stranger (www.thestranger.com) linked me to TED (www.ted.com), the annual Technology, Entertainment, and Design conference in Monterey, CA. Their site is crammed full of fascinating speeches by bright minds including Chris Anderson (The Long Tail), Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com), Bill Clinton (Oxford), Richard Dawkins (Oxford author of The God Delusion), Dan Gilbert (Stumbling on Happiness), Jane Goodall, Al Gore, Bjorn Lomborg (The Skeptical Environmentalist), Burt Ratan (XPrize), and of course Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google fame. I cannot plug this enough. These are some really thought provoking videos and a wonderful way to look a few years into the future.

Symbian and a good night out

Another week has now passed by. In just a month, Trinity term will be over and I'll be back in California. Come September, I'll officially be an Oxford MBA. My time here has just flown by. I kind of regret spending so much time with my nose in the books, working hard on assignments instead of going out and enjoying the city. I also regret not taking more pictures of my classmates and everyday routines. Sigh, so it goes.

On Tuesday the CEO of Symbian, Nigel Clifford spoke to my marketing innovations class. He was a really interesting, engaging, and intelligent speaker and shared his views of what it takes to build a successful high tech company. In general, Symbian has succeeded by aligning the interests of the major players in its industry and encouraging the development of an ecosystem of complementary assets. Nigel explained this as functioning within a two sided market; you increase your revenues by developing a part of the market that will indirectly increase your value to your customers. Similar to Nintendo collaborating with video game makers.

On Wednesday I uploaded assignment number five for the week and finally had some time to relax, so I did a pub crawl with a handful of MBAs. It was a fantastic night, though I was a little worst for wear the next day.