Puzhong Yao

MBA 2015
  • Home Town: Shijiazhuang, China
  • Pre-MBA: Fixed Income Trader for Goldman Sachs in London

Puzhong Yao

Post Graduation Goals:

Asset Management

Favorite GSB Memory So Far:

Chatting with inspiring classmates who share similar life-goals as me and offer eye an opening perspective.

Monday
07:00am
Woken up by alarm clock. Wife and kids are still sleeping. Have some cereal while reading the front page of Wall Street Journal.
07:45am
Leaving home and walking to school for my 8am class. Saying goodbye to my older son who just woke up.
08:00am
Big Data class. Today’s lesson examines how Google’s and Microsoft’s search engines work - how they use data to come up with search results that can satisfy customers and increase their own ad-click profit.
10:00am
Corporate Finance class. We continued the discussion on capital asset pricing models that started in the previous class.
12:00pm
Student Association Senate meeting. Working as co-treasurers, Horacio and I worked hard in the previous week to process the reimbursement requests from the fall quarter and give the Senate an update on the funding status of the SA.
01:00pm
I have no more class in the afternoon, so going home now!
03:00pm
Watching my little one playing in the backyard while I respond to emails.
05:00pm
Driving to Stanford West pre-school with my little one to pick up his brother. The school is on the famous Sand Hill Road on the other side of campus from Escondido Village, where I live in student housing.
05:30pm
Dinner time at home. Enjoyed my wife’s cooking with the family.
06:30pm
Work on today’s Kumon homework with my older kid. His little brother becomes interested and wants to jump in all the time.
08:30pm
With the kids in bed, I head to the MBA lounge early to get a good seat for tonight’s TALK, a tradition at the GSB where classmates share their personal stories and life journey. It is one of my favorite activities in the GSB and one of tonight’s TALKers is Jai, a good friend.
10:30pm
Got back from TALK. Now it's study time!
11:00pm
Have a chat with my wife about what happened today and go to bed.
Tuesday
07:00am
Wake up and start going through news and emails. As I went to bed quite early, I had to go through all the emails sent late in the night. A few emails today were from Wynn, who worked on the housing tours for Admit Weekend with me. Admit Weekend is fast approaching and we are finalizing the logistics for it.
08:00am
History of Financial Crisis class. We're going through the second and third waves of the banking crisis during the 1930's in the United States. This is my favorite class this quarter as it guides us through the various financial crises in the last 300 years, something I have wanted to learn about for a long time.
10:00am
Printed out some pretend bills for this afternoon’s Economics mid-term presentation.
12:00pm
Section Lunch with Dean Saloner with Q&A afterwards. It is so great to see my section again as we don’t have classes together anymore. Dean Saloner shared the school’s progress toward better utilizing online education tools.
01:30pm
Financial Crisis class with Professor Myron Scholes. Professor Scholes developed the famous Black-Scholes formula and has deep insights in a wide range of economics and finance topics.
03:00pm
For my Microeconomics class, we formed groups of 2-5 and each picked an industry to study. We chose two firms in the industries with very different organizational structures (but with the same goal) to compare the pros and cons. Today, each team presented their findings to the whole class.
05:00pm
Friends from China paid us a visit today. It was more than 10 years since we last saw each other and now live on different continents and all have kids. We toured the campus and had dinner in Arrillaga dining hall, my favorite on campus.
08:00pm
My wife has classes tonight at the university’s Continuing Studies Program, so I took the kids home after dinner, gave them a shower, and put them to bed. This process, after doing it for a while, is not as difficult as it first seemed!
10:00pm
Study time. There is a finance mid-term tomorrow morning at 9am. This leaves me about two hours tonight and 1.5 hours tomorrow morning to study.
12:00am
Bedtime!
Sunday
07:00am
Wake up and check my emails. Make some breakfast for everyone and more importantly watch the kids finish every bite.
09:00am
Take the older boy to church with me while my wife and the youngest go volunteer at the Significant Other session of Admit Weekend.
12:30pm
After church, picked up wife and son from the GSB and have lunch in Arrillaga dining hall.
03:00pm
Go to school and meet with Wynn to make the final preparations for our Admit Weekend housing tour. Unfortunately it has been raining all weekend, which apparently is the first time in 25 years that Admit Weekend has been rainy.
04:00pm
Take admits with families and children for a tour of Escondido Village and to my apartment in particular. As usual, the new admits are so interesting and having a chat with the group was a wonderful experience.
07:00pm
The normal night routine with kids: dinner, Kumon, showers, and off to bed.
10:00pm
Have a look at the reading for tomorrow. Classes are striking back!
11:00pm
After an exciting day, going to bed.