6月6日，我有幸参加了讲述麻省理工学院入学录取幕后故事的入学研讨会。这个有趣的研讨会由麻省理工学院86届理学学士Kim Lesley Hunter女士举办，也是2013年麻省理工学院斯隆商学院校友重聚的系列活动之一。Kim Lesley Hunter女士现任麻省理工学院招生办公室副主任和教育委员会主任。在此，我希望与大家分享一些研讨会的要点。

在研讨会上，Kim女士从不同的视角回顾了入学录取的变化，并回答了参与者的提问。一个重要的信息是像麻省理工学院这样的顶尖大学的入学录取在近年中已发生了巨大的变化。在Kim女士读书的年代，学生往往只申请3所大学，但现在，学生申请学校的基准数量已上升至12所。从获取学校信息的渠道来看，父母、网站和朋友是如今学生获得学校相关信息的三大主要渠道。在我看来，入学录取与过去最大的不同点在于学生参与“社区服务”的“活动”范围。在以前，只有10%的申请学生曾参与过“社区服务”，而现在的参与比例则高达95%。因此，各种各样的社区服务经历已成为学生档案中不可或缺的部分。这样的趋势在学校所选课程数量和在家的学习时间当中也有体现。从入学录取数据来看，麻省理工学院的申请人数从80年代的6,000人上升至2013年的18,000人。在2013年，麻省理工学院的整体录取率约为8%，录取学生的入学率为73%，国际学生的配额约为8%。在过去两年中，由于较高的录取学生入学率，麻省理工学院没有录取候补名单上的任何一名学生。另一个重要信息则是部分学生因为过分包装而没有展现真实的自己。就这一点，Kim女士重新强调了麻省理工学院在其官方网站上明确陈述的所需学生的特质，其重要内容包括：
◆ 与麻省理工学院的使命及文化相匹配
◆ 富有合作精神
◆ 富有创新精神
◆ 敢于冒险并能经受挫折
◆ 参与动手等具体的实践活动
◆ 全身心投入、富有好奇心
◆ 做一个和善的人等等

Yesterday on Jun. 6th, I had the opportunity to attend an interesting workshop titled as above. The workshop was run by Kim Lesley Hunter, BS ’86 as a part of activities of MIT Sloan Reunion 2013. Kim is now the Associate Director of Admissions of MIT and Director of the Educational Council. Here I share some of my reflections.

Basically, Kim took a retrospective view of admissions from different perspectives and answered questions from audiences. The first message was the admission to top tier colleges like MIT has undertaken dramatic changes through the years. In Kim’s days, students normally applied only 3 schools as norms, but now this number goes up to 12 as norms. From sourcing point of view, students nowadays rely heavily on parents, web sites and friends as top three sources of information. The most impressive difference from the past, from my point of view, is the area of “activities” students do in “community services”. There used to be only 10% of students from applicants did “community services”, but now, the number is as high as 95%. The engagement in various community services is an indispensable component in students’ profile. The same trend applied to course load from school and home work hours. For admission data, MIT’s applicant number increased from 6,000 in 80’s to 18,000 in 2013. Overall admitted rate is around 8% and yield rate is 73% in 2013. International students’ quota is around 8%. In past two years, MIT admitted no students from waitlist because of higher yield rates. The second important message was some students have been over-packaged that they lost themselves. At this point, Kim reinforced the highlights MIT has indicated in her official web site about “who MIT is looking for”. The important elements include:
◆ fitness to MIT’s mission and culture,
◆ be collaborative,
◆ be initiative,
◆ be risk-taking and resilient,
◆ hands-on activities,
◆ intensity, curiosity
◆ Be a nice people etc.

6月7日，我荣幸地参加了 Andrew Lo 教授的专题演讲。作为新当选的美国科学院院士和麻省理工学院斯隆商学院最有影响力的学者之一，Andrew Lo 教授为学术界的专家和普通老百姓所关注，并被视为“金融界的摇滚巨星”。

演讲开始时，Andrew Lo 教授介绍了一些癌症研究领域的重大突破。在医学上看来癌症并不是不治之症，但制药业的新药交付状况却往往令人失望。实际上，尽管癌症领域的科学研究已取得突破性进展，但令人失望的是可供普通百姓使用的临床用药却面临三大障碍：巨额投资成本、漫长的研发周期以及渺茫的成功概率。那是制药企业的商业模式出问题了吗？看来是的。

金融工程的话题由此引入。Andrew Lo 教授借用对最近金融危机的反思来阐述金融工程的巨大作用。他将金融危机简化为一个故事，讲述了通过金融工程工具怎样将一个糟糕的债券包装成为投资者眼中的充满吸引力的“宠儿”。这样的金融创新极大地促进了债券行业的发展，在规模上从数十亿发展到了数万亿。尽管这是金融工程的一个负面效应，但若发挥其正面效应、服务于社会将会有怎样的效果呢？如果我们设计出一个金融工具来诱导机构投资者和普通投资者对治疗癌症的前景进行投资又会变得怎样呢？若这个假设成立的话，我们将很可能为此意义重大的事业筹到巨额的资金。同时，Andrew Lo 教授讲述了开展此项目的概要及目标人群。除此以外，Andrew Lo 教授也提到，他相信金融工程还能够帮助人类应对许多其他方面的严峻挑战，如全球变暖和能源危机等。

在演讲中，Andrew Lo教授分享了许多独到的见解和关于人们如何对诱惑和恐惧做出反应的生动故事。由于他亲身经历了母亲和挚友因癌症去世的苦痛，Andrew Lo教授承诺了他将坚定不移地推动治疗癌症事业的发展。

Yesterday on Jun. 7th, I had the opportunity to attend an impressive keynote speech by Professor Andrew Lo, one of the most influential scholars from MIT Sloan now. As a newly elected member of the American Academy of Art and Science, Professor Andrew Lo attracts great deal of attentions from both academic world and normal people as kind of “rock start from financial world.”

Professor Lo started his speech by briefing some significant breakthrough in cancer research. It appears that cancer as a disease could be cure medically. But if you look at the pharmaceutical industry, in terms of its delivery of new medicine, it is disappointed. Even scientific push in the cancer research front has made breakthrough, it is quite gloomy that the practical medicine could be available for normal people’s use given its three obvious barriers, huge investment, lengthy research cycle and its low probability of success. Is the pharmaceutical business as a business model broken? Yes, quite likely.

Then financial engineering comes in. To illustrate the financial engineering’s power, Professor Lo reflected from its’ latest crisis. He simplified the financial crisis with a story of how a lousy bond could be packaged through financially engineering tools and becomes an attractive darling of investors. This financial innovation resulted in enormous growth of bond industry, from billions up to dozens of trillions in scale. Although that is a negative side of financial engineering, but how about leveraging it to serve society from positive side? What if we can design a financial tool to lure institute investors as well as normal investors to invest in our future’s bet on curing cancer? If it works, we can probably raise hundreds of billions of dollars to invest in this significant venture. As part of endeavor, Professor has laid out the outline how to proceed and whom they are going to target. Furthermore, Professor Lo believe financial engineering, at this sense, can help solve some other severe challenges of human being is facing, such as global warming and energy crisis.

In the speech, Professor Lo has shared many insights and thrill stories about how people as social animal react to luring and fearing. Sentimentally, he showed his commitment to the course of curing cancer through his personal suffering from his mother and best friend’s death of cancer.

6月6号和7号，我参加了由麻省理工学院斯隆商学院资深法学讲师John Akula举办的高管培训研讨会。John先生在斯隆商学院任教多年，为众多的高层管理者讲授关于敏感法律话题的课程。在哈佛大学获得博士及法学学位之后，John先生作为法律从业者曾任职于政府部门，并在著名的Goodwin Procter律师事务所担任合伙人长达15年以上。在研讨会上，John谈论了两个话题：商业机密和社会媒体。

针对商业机密这一话题，John探讨了其重要性、定义以及在换工作时所涉及的复杂性。考虑到法学和管理学的不同视角，雇主与员工都需要注意一些基本事项。例如，在自由雇佣制原则下，在签订雇佣合同时对于保守商业机密的义务界定及管理道德等。对员工来说，员工应当履行自己的义务保守商业机密，对公司忠诚并在换工作或自己创业时保持双手“干净”。对雇主来说，雇主应该懂得通过合约协议来保护自己的商业机密，并在自由雇佣制下充分行使自己的权力意志。但同时，雇主必须注意不能侵犯员工隐私并遵从管理道德。在讨论中，John分享了一些真实的案例来阐述他的观点。

就社会媒体的话题，John以两个问题为例，讨论了应该怎样应对社会媒体给公司带来的风险和机会。第一个问题是关于有一群员工通过Facebook这样的社会媒体抱怨公司的管理，有一些评论甚至不堪入耳。作为公司的高级经理，你会怎么做？第二个问题是关于同性恋歧视。一位经理强烈反对同性恋婚姻，而州政府却允许同性恋结婚。这位经理定期为一个很受欢迎的、讲述婚恋话题的博客撰稿，并拥有许多的粉丝。但很不巧，他的两名员工过着公开的同性恋生活并向公司总裁投诉关于经理对他们态度欠佳。作为总裁，你将怎样做出回应？与探讨商业机密话题时一样，John发起了讨论，并从法律和管理学的角度分享了他的独到的见解与经验。

On Jun. 6th and 7th, I attended the Executive Education Workshop by John Akula, Senior Lecturer of Law at MIT Sloan. John has been teaching Law sensitive courses to managers at Sloan for years. He used to be practitioner in law as clerk for government and as partner for famous law firm, Goodwin Procter, for more than 15 years after earning a PhD and a law degree at Harvard. John talked two topics: Trade Secret and Social Media.

At Trade Secret, John discussed its’ basic tension, definition, and it’s complexity when changing jobs. Given the different perspectives from law and management, both employees and employers have something basics to pay attention to. For instance, the at-will rules, any obligation for trade secret made when signing up employment contract and management morality etc. For employees, you should behave according to your obligation to trade secret, loyalty to the firm and keep your hands “clean” when changing job or starting your own business. For employers, you should protect your trade secret through agreement and can exercise your power at-will, but you should keep in your mind not breaking the fine line of privacy and hold your managerial morality. John shared several real cases in illustrating his points.

With the topic of Social Media, John talked about how to deal with risks and opportunities when social media occurs as an issue to companies. John demonstrated two problems. The first problem is about a group of employees are complaining through social media like Facebook about the company’s management. Some comments are nasty and obscene. As senior manager of the company, what are you going to do? The second problem is about gay discrimination. The manager is a strong opponent to gay marriage for which, however, the state government has approved. The manager is a regular contributor to a popular blog on marriage issue and gets many followers. Unfortunately, there are two employees working for this manager live publicly a gay lifestyle and they complain to you, the president of the firm, about their manager’s attitude towards them. How will you react to their call? As the topic of Trade Secret, John initiated discussions and shared his insights and experiences from both legitimate and managerial point of view.

6月7日，我参加了“回到课堂”主题活动的“算法交易及其负面影响”演讲。主讲人Andrei Kirienko教授在进入麻省理工学院任教前曾于2010年至2012年担任商品期货交易委员会（CFTC）的首席经济学家。Andrei Kirienko教授毕业于宾夕法尼亚大学并获得经济学博士学位。

在课堂上，Andrei Kirienko教授首先介绍了“算法”这一名词的定义及起源。然后，他回顾了基于算法原则的金融模型丰富多彩的发展历史，包括从上个世纪50年代的马科维茨模型、60年代的夏普资本资产定价模型、70年代的布莱克-斯科尔斯公式（套利定价理论）、80年代格罗斯曼的理论到如今的高频交易。在数年前，由超级计算机推动的高频交易刚刚出现就广为市场所接受。但随着它的急剧发展和在交易中无可比拟的优势，高频交易已渐行渐远并带来了负面影响。例如，高频交易被认为是几年前美股市场暴跌的根本原因之一。Andrei Kirienko教授正在起草一些监管机制以规范这个由技术推动的交易模型。他相信，这样的努力是有必要的，并且从长期来看，算法交易应该受到严格的监管。

On Jun. 7th, I attended the Back to the Classroom session: Algorithmic Trading and Its Discontents by Professor Andrei Kirienko. Before joining MIT, he served as chief economist between 2010 to 2012 for Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Kirilenko received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Professor Andrei started his lecture with the word “algorithm”, its definition and original. Then he took the retrospective view on the chromatic development of algorithmic based financial models from 1950s Markowitz model, 1960s Sharpe, CAPM, 1970s Black Scholes formula (APT), 1980s Grossman’s work to the contemporary high frequency trading. The machine driven high frequency trading was well accepted few years ago when it was invented. But with its dramatic growth and unparallel dominance on the trading in nowadays, high frequency trading has gone too far and has brought negative consequences. One of the root causes of the flash crash happened few years ago was believed to be the high frequency trading. Professor Andrei is working on drafting some regulatory mechanism at top of this technology driven trading model. He believes this effort is a necessity and from long run, algorithmic trading should be strictly regulated.