—HARRY LIME, IN THE THIRD MAN After the strictures of the first year, the second year, the elective curriculum, was all about choice. You could take more courses or pursue independent studies supervised by a professor. During the final weeks of the previous semester, we had received a thick booklet describing the second-year courses. We were also given access to surveys of the various courses completed by previous classes of MBA students. This was like a restaurant guide, with formal descriptions of the courses supported by customer reviews. These ranged from superlative, “greatest course at HBS, hands-down,” to coruscating, “horrible professor, lame cases, total waste of time.” We could see which classes were oversubscribed, which were on the verge of being struck from the catalog. The most popular second-year courses were Advanced Competitive Strategy, Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise, and Entrepreneurial Finance. The courses were assigned using a computer algorithm.
