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SEPTEMBER 1998 MBA JOURNAL:PRE-TERM/ORIENTATION Raghu Ponnapalli: Preparing for B-School
Patiently waiting for September to arrive, I kept up with events at LBS from my home in New York through the school's online forum -- a high-tech way to communicate with the incoming MBA 2000 class. The school mailed IDs and passwords for the forum to all the accepted students and encouraged us to use it. It was a great way to get to know other students, start looking for housing, and communicate with the MBA office. Using the system, I soon found about a dozen future classmates living in and around Manhattan, and we all decided to get together one evening. It was a lot of fun meeting the people that I'd be spending the next two years with. They all had interesting backgrounds, and none of us had worked in similar kinds of jobs. One future classmate was working in management just a few blocks away from where I worked, another was in publishing, while a third was in the oil industry and spent most of his time traveling around the country and the world. It was a good way to start getting connected. My flight touched down at Heathrow on Sept. 1. After checking into my hotel, the first thing I did was to go to the school. I was very excited and couldn't wait to meet everyone. I introduced myself to all the people in the MBA office whom I'd been speaking with over the phone for the last few months. They were very helpful and supportive, which I greatly appreciated. I also explored the school more closely. One thing that really surprised me was the high level of technology at LBS. I hadn't chosen the school for that reason, but it was a pleasant surprise that the school was so advanced. Aside from the forum, the school had just opened a brand new high-tech building which housed a library, gym (including swimming pool), computing center, offices, and even hotel-like rooms for short-course senior executive participants. The whole building was wired to the school's network, and the Internet. Despite the school's best intentions, there was some last-minute construction going on during preterm. New lecture theatres were also being built, and offices were being refurbished. Overall, however, I was very impressed by the school's commitment to improvement. My next course of action was to look for housing. I dreaded it at first but soon found out how easy it actually was. There were lots of apartments for rent posted at the school, and many real estate agents nearby willing to help you. Agents in London don't charge you a fee, like they do in New York -- that was a real financial relief. Almost everyone shares with his or her fellow students. Usually three people get together and look for suitable housing. The school is located in a very expensive area of London, and all the places that I saw ranged from $700 to $1,000 a month per person. I found the perfect place after about five days of looking and quickly moved into the apartment with my two roommates, Keith and Jehangir, who are from Britain and India, respectively. The flat is large, has a great view of the sunset, only costs me $750, and is right down the street from the school. It isn't necessary to live so close, since the school is located near all major public transportation. However, I'm not known for being a morning person, so I chose to live close by and maximize my sleep potential. After getting settled into my flat, I finally had a chance to explore London a bit. I headed out with some students I had met to see what nightlife the city offered: Leicester Square, Soho, Covent Garden & Camden Town. We had a lot of fun. I even went on my first pub crawl, which was organized by some of my fellow students from the U.S. Let me tell you, it was easy crawling to the next pub -- London seems to have one on every corner (picture New York City, but just replace all the corner groceries with bars). It was also fun to see how wild ex-accountants and auditors got when you let them outside! Surprisingly, I haven't noticed that much difference between the people in London and New York. Sometimes, it even feels like I'm still in the U.S. If you turn on the TV, you can watch plenty of American shows, and you quickly stop noticing the accent when people speak. Since LBS has such a diverse student body, I find many more cultural differences when I'm with my MBA class than when I'm out enjoying London. On the academic front, I was eager to start the preterm program and was happy to see Sept. 10 roll around. The preterm courses offered were data analysis (for people with little quantitative background), business statistics, and two financial accounting courses (for people like me who have never been exposed to accounting). I signed up for statistics (as a refresher) and accounting. About a third of the incoming class takes data analysis, and two-thirds take stats and accounting. The preterm courses were taught as full-day sessions lasting for about six days. I found that the statistics course was taught very well and designed to be relevant to business. I learned a lot more than I expected. Multiple regressions? No problem. I had to wonder if all the professors were this good, or if the school was presenting its best faculty member up front. Next I took two accounting courses, and this was when I really learned the most. They were a big help to me in preparing for the core courses, giving me the basics I needed to analyze balance sheets, cash flows, and profit and loss statements. I'm no expert yet, but if a professor asks me to comment on the future of a company or whether it would make a good acquisition target, I can now respond intelligently. The entire preterm program was well structured, and the professors made themselves available to any students who needed extra help. The preterm classes had about 60 students in them, and twice a day you had to break up into small groups, head over to your assigned meeting room, and work through problems together. Professors and teaching assistants were on hand to help with any problems we had. I strongly recommend that future students take the preterm courses. Apart from preparing you for the first term, they also provide a great way to get to know your classmates. Orientation kicked off with a full day of activities. After breakfast, we got together to hear speeches from the MBA staff, second-year students, and the dean of the school. The dean, John Quelch, like us, is new to the school. His speech was definitely a highlight. He talked about the strengths we had as a class, and emphasized the learning and opportunities that would be available to us. The rest of the day was spent on group exercises. We also learned a lot about the backgrounds of our fellow classmates. The Class of 2000 hails from 52 countries, and has work experience of every possible sort. Some students have run their own firms, worked in high government office, and many have worked in several countries. One of the first people I met in orientation was Nicholas Denny, who's British. Bizarrely, Nick has worked in almost every European country except for Britain and speaks five different languages. At LBS almost everyone is bilingual, with some students speaking four, five, or even six languages. This is somewhat intimidating for me, since my foreign language skills are limited to the little I can remember from my high school Spanish class. Twenty-two percent of the class are from North America, 17% of the students are British, and other nationalities comprise more than half the class. I found myself discussing the Australian and German elections with fellow students. And generally speaking, I was getting information and hearing views that I would never have been exposed to despite having grown up and lived in New York. During the first day, we also found out which groups we were assigned to. There are 240 people in the Class of 2000, and the students are divided into groups of about six. These students are the ones you're going to have to work with throughout the first year. All the courses are graded based on a combination of papers, group work, and the final exam, so it's crucial to work well with the team you are assigned to. My group pretty much covers the globe. There is Adrian, who has worked in the U.S. and Canada but is British; Sarah, who worked in consulting in Australia; In-Soo, who was in the telecom industry in South Korea; Roman, who did marketing in the Ukraine; and finally, Christophe, who worked in the media in France. During the rest of orientation week, we were introduced to the major departments at the school (Career Management Center (CMC), IT, Library services, etc.). The CMC had workshops scheduled on resume writing and interview skills. They had presentations planned on different industries and job functions and provided counseling sessions to students. In addition, we were asked to take some computerized tests that would help us determine our career focus. They also required that we have our resumes ready soon for their online database. Recruiters log on to the LBS database through the Internet and can look through these resumes. We were told that during the upcoming term, we would have many regularly scheduled sessions with CMC. Orientation came with classes too. We took a one-week core course on Understanding General Management (UGM). This course exposed me to the case study style of learning. A case study consists of analyzing a writeup of a real-life business situation. We assess whether the players in the case acted appropriately or inappropriately, identify the problems or successes, and recommend future actions. The key, however, is the class discussion that follows the analysis. The point is to learn from the case, the professor, and from each other. Most first year courses at LBS follow a case study approach, but this is not as true with electives and second-year courses. The UGM course focused on giving us an introduction to different management styles. Again, we had excellent professors. They were entertaining, knowledgeable, and always managed to get great class participation. It was also during orientation that I learned that a major part of the professors' evaluation and promotion is based on student feedback, a factor that certainly bolsters healthy student/faculty relations and encourages continual improvements in teaching quality. The preterm activities finished up with a bus tour of London, a cruise on the Thames River, and a party at the school. Overall, London has turned out to be as exciting as I'd heard it was. I've settled in, made new friends, and gotten back into the habit of going to class. I'm prepared, but I still don't know exactly what to expect. What will working with a group for the rest of the year be like? How demanding will the courseload be? What about that summer job? As usual, I'm craving answers. I'll tell you about them as soon as I find out, so stay tuned...  Raghu Ponnapalli  | | [an error occurred while processing this directive] Learn about your online education options |
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