The Great Bidding Game

A biding system is used in ISB to allot electives to students. The first round of bidding for elective courses of Term 5 got completed a few days back. A total of 4000 points can be used to bid for courses over Terms 5 to 8. Some people used almost all of the 4000 points to bid just for courses of Term 5 while others used points sparingly. The number of seats available for many of the courses is lesser than the number of people applying for them. This led to people even changing their bids from time to time depending on what they could make out of the rumors circulating around. The results can be said to be tilted in favor of people who bid more. There are people who got all the subjects they wanted and there are people who didn’t get any of their choices. The Academic Services office is supposed to work with them to at least get them the minimum number of courses they are required to do in the term. There are still many people on the waitlist for many courses and would be able to get the courses when people start dropping the courses they don’t want.

A few words have been added to the campus dictionary based on the name of students who became data points constituting extreme observations in the game:

Koshied: When you spread lots of rumors around, bid high and get most of what you wanted but aren’t left with much points to bid in the successive terms.
Mojoed: When you get to know that you have bid for all underbid courses/sections, got all of them and only 5 points out of 4000 may be deducted from your account.
Kundooed: When you got none of the courses you bid for, maybe because you were too busy saving for the future.
Unkundooed: When you have been Kundooed and suddenly you get a course because you moved up the waitlist and suddenly found yourself in the class list.

After the bidding results were declared, efforts to form groups with people of one’s choice began. It is up to the students to choose their group members in the elective terms. Heard that many people even colluded together and bid the same points for the same course and same section so that they could form groups together. Due to lack of prior information about all this, I may end up in groups with different sets of people in the courses I have chosen. It would be interesting to see if I can remember who all are with me in what all courses through the next term. Hope I do not send assignments done in one study group accidentally to another group which I might be a part of in another subject !!!

Moving on to other things …. the Music Club @ ISB organized a music competition between sections on Friday. The event was very well contested by all sections and I think proved to be the most enthusiastically participated event of the four terms. There was a lot of cheering and booing going on. My section (Section D) managed to win the competition. It was good to see the efforts put in by so many people getting rewarded. It was a really humbling experience to see so much of talent on campus.

Before I sign off for the day, here is a quote apparently made by Prof Jagmohan Raju of Wharton, who taught us Marketing Decision Making: “The length of skirts in a nation is inversely proportion to its GDP”