Its been four rounds of bidding already for the spring quarter and I haven\’t been enrolled yet in the courses I truly badly wanted this quarter. Blame it on the new and inefficiently designed ‘efficient market’ style course bidding system. Highly desired courses (taught by professors like Jim Schrager/ Richard Thaler) are going for a premium only because the graduating students are throwing their points around. If not them, then blame it on the extra premium that these courses go for only because you have to now bid individually on courses. Bottomline is: I am unable to afford the courses I really want especially those taught by certain professors.
While we have gone from the search of universals (rules that govern the way all of us behave) to understanding variability within humans, I wish we could go back to the obsession with universals. The understanding of variability is doing a great disservice to me when it comes to bidding on courses at Booth.
PS: of course, its possible to manipulate iBid (the current bidding system) given a few boundary conditions. You could collude with another student who has also enrolled in the same course and have him/her drop the course just minutes before the round is about to end. This way you get to bid for a steal than if it had been open. Naturally, this idea is moot if the course has even a single vacancy. By having your friend drop the full-capacity-course minutes before you bid, you eliminate the possibility of opening it to the student population. This is where the boundary conditions come into play: a few minutes/seconds before the round ends, the course being completely full and more importantly you have a fellow student who will do this for you. Not that tough a condition.
Sure enough, in my attempts to being an ideal Boothie, I did not implement my own hack else I would not be venting here. Hopefully the designers of iBid are listening.
