A case is graded on the recommendation
The commonest failure is an elegant summary. A case answer that retells the situation to the person who assigned it has spent its length on the only part already known, and the marks were all sitting in the last two pages that never got written.
- ◆The decision being made, and who has to make it, named in the opening paragraph
- ◆The two or three issues that actually bear on it, rather than every issue present
- ◆A framework applied instead of explained, with the numbers it demands supplied
- ◆A recommendation written as an action, with a sequence and an owner
- ◆The financial consequence worked through rather than asserted
- ◆The risks, and what you would watch to learn the decision was wrong
A simulation is a sequence, not a session
Decisions compound. A careless opening round narrows what later rounds can reach, and no amount of cleverness in round four recovers a market position given away in round one. So the early rounds are played conservatively and deliberately, with the levers tested one at a time so the effect of each is legible afterward.
The score is rarely the assignment. Most programs grade the debrief far more heavily: what you decided, what you expected, what the market did instead, and what you changed. A middling result explained precisely outscores a strong one explained by luck, and that memo is written from a record kept during the rounds.
Group deliverables, and the part that is genuinely yours
Team work fails for scheduling reasons far more than for ability. Someone travels, someone works nights, a section arrives at midnight in a format nobody else uses. What can be handled here is your own share: the section assigned to you, delivered early enough to be integrated rather than appended, in a register that survives being pasted beside four others.
Two things are refused. Nobody here writes your evaluations of teammates, since those are your judgment about named people and belong to you alone. And nobody posts in your team's channel or corresponds as you with classmates. Where the group has genuinely stalled, what is offered is a workable plan and your part of it finished first.
The quantitative half
Accounting, corporate finance and statistics account for most of the anxiety and almost none of the sympathy. Models are built in Excel with the formulas left live and the assumptions set out on their own sheet, so you can change an input in front of a professor and watch the outputs move rather than hoping nobody asks.
Statistical work is planned before it is run, in Excel, SPSS or R depending on what the course sets, and the interpretation is written in the words the rubric itself uses. Where a whole term is at stake, the course can be carried entire; where one paper needs rescuing, rubric-first editing costs a good deal less.
Send the course and the format
Which courses, whether a simulation or a team project is running, and the dates. Two hours for a figure, at no charge.
Cases and quantities are split
Written cases go to letters and commerce, models and statistics to the statistician, so neither is done adequately by somebody good at the other.
Deliverables land early
Your sections arrive in time to be integrated, and simulation rounds are recorded as they are played rather than afterward.
Questions put to the house
Can you take only my part of a group project?
Yes, and it is the most requested arrangement in an MBA. Your assigned section is written to the rubric and delivered early enough for your team to integrate it rather than paste it in at midnight. Formatting is matched to whatever the group agreed, and the register is kept plain enough to sit beside four other contributors without announcing itself.
Will you write my peer evaluations?
No. Those are your assessment of named classmates, they carry consequences for other people, and they belong to you alone. This is one of the few outright refusals here and it does not move. What can be done is help you think through what the form is actually asking, so that what you write is fair and specific rather than defensive.
How does a business simulation actually get handled?
As a sequence rather than a set of sittings. Decisions are recorded round by round with the reasoning attached, levers are moved one at a time so their effects stay legible, and the debrief is written from that record. Where a round has a hard deadline and your access is required, you are told exactly what you must do and when.
Can you build the financial model rather than describe it?
Yes, and it arrives live. Formulas stay in the cells, assumptions sit on their own labeled sheet, and sensitivity is built in where the assignment invites it, so changing a growth rate visibly moves the outcome. A model delivered as pasted values is a picture of a model, and it fails the first question asked of it.
Is the capstone or consulting project included?
It is quoted separately, because it is a different piece of work with a different reader. Business capstones usually produce something a client could act on, judged partly by a faculty member and partly by whether it would survive a boardroom, and they carry a presentation that often decides much of the mark. The capstone page describes how that is handled.
