Electives and bidding – Alum gyaan

 Optimize in initial terms, later terms you’ll have to take based on how many points you
have left.
 One possible strategy - Take more courses in term 4/6/7, and keep light in term 5
 Take finance electives – don’t hesitate, won’t get a chance later, hard to understand
finance in post-ISB work
 Specialization DOES NOT matter at all in the short term, could be a marker in future, if at
all
 Bid for courses in indicative bidding – even if it means you are taking 5 courses in a few
terms. You can decide to drop it later. VERY IMP so that ASA assigns adequate number
of sections. Otherwise, ASA will not budge in future, courses could get very expensive
and people won’t get what they want.
 Bid incrementally, don’t raise directly from 100 to 500 during actual bidding. This screws
it up for everyone.
 Degree doesn’t show specialization

Strategy
NEGA – Radhika Puri good
CDMA – Naga, very good
Managing teams – OK course
Creativity and Leadership – lightest course – no pre-reads, no assignments
Global strat mgmt. – light course, easy to score A
Mktg strategy – Definitely take – Prof Arunachalam very good – common to mktg and
strategy

Term 7
Economics of strategy – Louis Thomas very good, take it
Managing complexity is good
Strategic talent mgmt. – chill course

Term 8
Business law – chill and cheap
Digital innovation strategies - chill
Govt perf mgmt. – decent course, slow prof
Strategic innovation mgmt. – OK course

Finance
Finance - most courses repetitive
For non-finance guys – Basics covered in FSAN/BVFS + TAM. Could do CCMA as well

Options and futures – Very difficult, but imp course for finance majors
Financial statement analysis – useful if you are not majoring in finance, insights out of ratios
CCMA – definitely take
INPE – very good prof
Portfolio mgmt. – build on finance laws, and how to build a portfolio – light course. Prachi
gets better ; pretty heavy.
BVFS – take if you are not taking FSAN, don’t know how good the prof is; managerial
interpretation; FSAN is finance heavy.
Adv Corp Fin – Shashwat Alok is very good

Term 7
Asset mgmt – Vikram Kuriyan very well known, teaching is OK; recommended even for non-
finance guy

Data analytics in finance – a little heavy, basic coding, All the techniques are usable any
where – Rajib Saha

TAMU/TATU – very good prof. Useable in day to day life. May or may not overlap with BVFS
Hedge funds – good in term 8
International finance – a little heavy

Digital innovation strategies – very good course

SPMG – term 8 – OK course, not very heavy

Operations
Term 4
LSCM – goes to a quant heavy side later, really good cases, quite heavy workload. Helps with
Ops in work, covers entire supply chain.
Strategies for the digital economy – very good for ppl getting into tech; prof very good

Term 5
Proj mgmt – extremely chill course, just NPV calculations, prof is OK
Tech strategy consulting – repetitive with Strategies for the digital economy
Strategy implementation – prof is OK

Term 6
Product service design – chill course – not much learning

Business analytics using data mining - excel based analysis. MUST TAKE if not taking Data
analytics in finance.

Forecasting analytics – very good course, gives a flavor of analytics. Helps in work post-ISB

Pricing and revenue optimization – very good, optimize revenues, good for managers. Not
as heavy as BADM, will do this in post-ISB work a lot

Total Quality/Lean – some good, some FAFF. Course is OK.

Term 8 – take anything you want
Healthcare – Sarang Deo very good; one of the best courses in Ops, heavy, great learning,
concepts applicable across industries.

MKTG
Mktg research – fully B2C – very important; liked very much as it is useful. May be easy to
get.

Term 5
B2B mktg – prof very good
Mktg commication strategy – chilled out course, ads in class, useful if you want to be brand
manager
Pricing – chillest course
COBE – great prof; RISHI BATRA is OK; content very good; useful for brand mgmt
Digital mktg – how to put ads on facebook, linkedin, twitter, etc. Easy course

Mktg services – best course EVER; Great prof. Piyush Kumar

Mktg strategy – DON’T MISS. Arunachalam – great prof
Above two – very expensive

New product dev – very good prof, great course

MKCS & Brand mgmt. – overlapping content

Customer focused product planning – very good; prof invented conjoint analysis; quant
heavy; data driven.

Mktg strategy and economic analyses – OK prof, not enough learning

Strategic customer analysis/Data driven customer mgmt. in term 8 – both overlap – take
one; quant heavy
Strategic healthcare mktg – Ok prof; content good

Term 8
Contemporary film making – TP course
Mktg analytics- How to do mktg spend
Rural mktg – Very good prof, will help with FMCG or rural stint in future

Healthcare/Pubic policy

Indian healthcare services – great course content, prof don’t know??

Strategic healthcare mktg – OK prof
Sarang Deo’s course – BEST
Change mgmt. – Ramnarayan OK
Govt perf mgmt. – heavy, good course, OK prof
Microfinance – good course