Bloomberg Businessweek
Go To Businessweek.com
During the past 20 years, the author has watch China move from being a developing country into an industrial superpower
Money Moves, 5/24: Chocomize Co-Founder Fabian Kaempfer talks with Bloomberg’s Deirdre Bolton about the business of customizing chocolate
The president's campaign has a new rule—no cell phones allowed
In honor of remote control inventor Eugene Polley, we recognize other influential but neglected inventors who have felt the sting of stolen glory
Forget Adderall. Traders now pop chia seeds to stay focused and energized
The Italian automaker and others are adding hybrid technology to elite cars
The storied bridge that links San Francisco and Marin County changed the face of California
Schools cultivate ties with startups before they're big successes
Dave McClure's traveling venture capital show scours the world for promising startups
Editor’s Note: To help you make the transition from the working world to graduate business school, Bloomberg Businessweek is launching a new series about how to prepare for an MBA program. The series—this is the third installment—will provide tips from experts and business school insiders, including administrators, students, and alumni, about how to do everything from making ends meet without a salary to setting career goals for achieving your dream job after graduation.
Even for Type-A personalities used to back-to-back meetings and overflowing in-boxes, the transition from work to business school can be a jarring one. For everyone else, it can result in culture shock in the extreme. It’s one reason why many new students struggle before getting their B-school legs. Which is unfortunate, because it’s entirely avoidable.
Some people sign up for full-time MBA programs thinking they’re going to get two years of vacation from work, says Kira Dietrich, a second-year student at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management. While MBA programs provide a safer atmosphere than the workplace to test ideas and to network, it brings a new level of demands and stress. After all, a full-time job requires employees to focus on the role they fill at the office and their personal obligations at home, whereas business school has students juggling a class schedule, studying, student clubs, a career search, and their personal lives. Time and stress management are obvious necessities.
Students quickly learn, says Dietrich, that an MBA program is not at all a holiday. In fact, business schools throw an enormous number of opportunities at students from the moment they set foot on campus—from networking and recruiting events to career workshops and volunteer outings. This often brings on FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), a disease said to spread like the plague among first-year students. FOMO symptoms include overscheduling—signing up for everything—and giving in to peer pressure.
"Peer pressure is a strong force at business school, and I’m not talking about drinking," says Or Skolnik, a second-year student at Columbia Business School in New York. “You could hang out with a group of very academic kids or those who are focused on one industry, and you can get dragged along to events of theirs when they’re not productive for you."
The cure for FOMO is determining one’s goals before business school starts. Most students have a general grasp of their career goals long before the first day of classes—they need to in order to complete their applications and pass muster with the admissions committee. But working out the details—honing in on specific roles and employers, for example— is something that shouldn’t wait until the last minute.
During the summer before her first year, Dietrich researched jobs. Knowing she wanted to do something with portfolio management, she conducted research, started networking, and made a list of contacts, she says. This self-assigned homework gave her an edge, Dietrich adds.
"Try to figure out what career path to pursue as soon as possible," she says. "People don’t realize how fast these things happen. Recruiters come to campus in October, and interviews for internships typically happen in January."
Knowing what they want to do after graduation can help students maximize their business school experience and eliminate the need to sign up for every event on campus. Instead, they should zero in on activities that will help them achieve their goals, says Amanda Shaw, director of student services at the Johnson School. "The more you wander off the career front, the more everything will suffer," she says.
Learning to make the best use of time is so important to Columbia Business School that it is planning to launch workshops in the fall, led by psychologists and executive coaches, to give students tools for prioritizing and scheduling better, says Nayla Bahri, assistant dean and dean of students at CBS. Making use of the odd hours in the day—that two-hour break between classes, for example—to get things done is a must, says Shaw. But getting comfortable with a packed schedule, setting priorities, and making efficient use of time is something that should begin long before Day One. If you’re not already adept at multitasking, the time to start is now. And starting to sort through the many activities that will be available to you and deciding which ones will serve you best isn’t a bad idea either.
