Thanks to Sanket for your comment on my last post. I’d encourage anyone reading this blog who has questions to post them; otherwise, we risk blogging about things that don’t address what’s on your mind. I felt Sanket’s question merited a separate post, rather than trying to answer in another comment – here goes.
By way of background, Independent Study Projects are typically taken in place of elective classes. Tuck first year goes something like this (capturing the spirit rather than the title of each class):
Fall A
- Microeconomics
- Stats
- CEO perspective cases
- Leading people and teams
Fall B
- Accounting
- Capital Markets
- Modeling
- Organizational structure / design
- Personal leadership and reflection
Winter
- Corporate Finance
- International macroeconomics
- Strategy
- Marketing
Spring
- First Year Project (more on this later)
- ELECTIVES
Second year is all electives. If you have extensive experience in a first year course, you have the choice of taking it anyway (Why would you? Maybe to secure a very high grade for the class, or to take the academic pressure off, so you can focus more on e.g. recruitment or other classes you have limited experience of) or trying to exempt it (exemption requirements vary from class to class). I decided on the latter for Accounting and Corporate Finance. (As you might expect from this amazing place, it’s expected at Tuck that you’ll still be there to support your study group in your area of expertise, even if you’re not taking the class.) In place of exempted classes, one can take elective courses or pursue independent study projects.
Now, to answer your question, I’ll focus on this term’s ISP.
I had been in touch with a firm I was really interested in, and suggested an acquisition target I knew from having worked in the UK that I thought they might be interested in. They were interested and asked if I could suggest other potential targets. Of course, this was a great opportunity. I was definitely going to do the work and the opportunity to turn it into an ISP was a no-brainer.
Faculty and staff at Tuck are famously approachable. (For example, I spent half an hour today chatting about international macroeconomics with Matt Slaughter, an Associate Dean at the school, and member of the Council of Economic Advisors under Pres. Bush. An alum I spoke with recently talked about the long bike rides he used to go on with Ken French (of Fama-French fame, if you’re into finance). It’s another really cool thing about this school!)
Each ISP requires two faculty advisors. As the project I’m working on is in international consumer goods focused private equity, I have a PE professor (who I spent last summer working with before starting school) and a global marketing professor on my team. They were both very supportive of the project.
The most memorable part of the project? It’s early days; so far, it was scoping out the project with the PE firm I’m working with in their boardroom overlooking Central Park. I simply would not have been in that room if I hadn’t had the Tuck brand behind me.
Can you do and OB ISP? Absolutely. You design the ISP and can do it on virtually anything you are interested in. There are pretty awesome OB professors here (Adam Kleinbaum, Bill Joyce, Pino Audia) who will enrich your study. The research centers will definitely help you – Pino helps run the leadership center; though, the onus is on you to scope the subject, develop a reading and interview list, and set a project timeline. For me, this work makes an ISP more consuming than a standard class, where all you’ve got to do is learn what’s put in front of you.
Finally, for me, the most important part of an ISP is setting a manageable scope. To wide a scope can be fatal to a successful project. But, overall, it’s a rewarding experience to work on something you’re very interested in and passionate about.
I appreciate this has been a long entry. Hopefully, it’s also been useful!
Read the full article: Independent Study Projects