How To Approach The First Year Of MBA? | Ft. Summit Gupta, IIM Shillong

At the onset, when I decided to write up something for the MBA aspirants, I was confused as to what to write about given the plethora of topics that can be written about such as the MBA interview preparation or the books one should read before joining the MBA or the internship experience or the experience of the first year. But then one thing, which I found that was difficult for me in my first year was the approach to the MBA itself. Here, in this write-up, I talk about three things that I believe are the most important in the first year of an MBA.

So, as soon as you have gotten admission to your dream B-School, the first thing that starts popping in mind is how to prepare for the MBA journey ahead. There is a mix of excitement along with the fear that whether I will be able to compete amongst the best, how will the seniors be, will I be able to make good friends and the most crucial question is of summer internships. There are a lot of things going on in mind at the same time, and answers to most of them are not available at that moment. But be rest assured, the B-School is worried about all these things more than any candidate and ensures that a conducive learning environment is provided to all the students which makes it comfortable for the students to get used to college life. At IIM Shillong, we always say that our campus is home away from home, and when I 1st entered the college, my seniors and administration went to any length to ensure that we felt like a home away from home.

But still, being prepared always helps and having a fair idea of the culture of the place where you are going to spend your two years of your life is very important. To understand the culture, the best source is the seniors. Talking to seniors may seem intimidating initially but speaking from personal experience, knowing the seniors will help in the long run in every way whether academically or non-academically. So, the next question that arises is how to contact them? The best contact would be your undergraduate college seniors or work colleagues who are currently pursuing an MBA from the same college as they will be able to help you the most. Even if they are not studying in the same college, in all probabilities, they will be having contacts in that college. The next source of communication is the coaching institute from where you prepared for CAT. The coaching institutes have students in almost all the colleges, and they can connect you with the student of the college you have gotten admission to. If both the options are not available, as was the case with me, then you can directly approach the seniors via LinkedIn. In the MBA, if you want to network and connect to the industry, LinkedIn is your bible. Being active on LinkedIn is one of the most critical things in the MBA and goes a long way in not only making useful contacts but also in learning a lot of practical skills. The college seniors are very approachable on LinkedIn and will be glad to talk to you about the college as they have been in the same boat a year before and understand your anxiety and doubts. So, my advice will be that feel free to talk to the seniors, and you might end up making good friends not only in your batch but also in your senior batch. Sometimes, it is highly likely that one might not be comfortable to talk to someone individually on LinkedIn, and in that case, you can connect to college seniors on other platforms such as official Facebook groups, WhatsApp groups, or sites like pagalguy where the admissions team is very active in answering the queries posed by students.

Now, apart from connecting and networking with seniors, another essential thing to be prepared for is to be thorough with the basics. When I talk about fundamentals, I would like to draw your attention specifically to two subjects, i.e. Accounts and Economics. The reason for the same is that these two subjects are very technical and take time to understand. Generally, a term of two-three months may not be enough to master or at least properly know the subject and so it’s good to prepare the basics beforehand which will help in understanding the subjects in a much better way. For Economics, the book ‘Day to Day Economics’ by Prof. Satish Deodhar is a must-read irrespective of the field you have studied. The book covers macroeconomics in a very concise and easy way and forms the base of Economics that will be covered in an MBA. As far as Accounts is concerned, instead of books, online courses are much better as the courses will help you understand how the practical sums are solved. Courses can be done from various online sources, but I found the introductory courses of the Corporate Finance Institute (CFI) quite insightful. They are free and provide certificates that can be added on LinkedIn. Still, if you prefer books over courses, then ‘Romancing the Balance Sheet’ by Prof. Anil Lamba is a great book that argues that there is no such thing as a ‘Non-Finance’ Person.

And lastly, above all, the most important thing, without which the MBA is not possible, is having good friends. The friends are the ones who will ensure that you do not miss the morning 9:00 am class, that when you are trimming your beard for the interview, they are tending to your ties and shoes. Friends are the ones who will take those 10:00 pm sessions (we call them Knowledge Transfer Sessions or KTs) the night before the exams which will guarantee the passing of the subject. Remember, that MBA above the degree and placements is an experience, an experience which you will hardly get anywhere else and that experience is incomplete without friends for they are your family not for the next two years only but for the whole life as the things that they will be able to understand no one will ever understand it.

I would like to end this article with this famous quote:

“It is our choices, that show what we truly we are, far more than our abilities” – J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

You might be having umpteen skills and talents, but at the end of the day, it all boils down to how you decide to use them, and those choices will make or break your MBA.

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About the Author: Summit Gupta is currently a second-year student of IIM Shillong. With a BBA degree in finance and an SIP experience at Goldman Sachs, he is a finance enthusiast and loves to read about the current happening in the world of business and Economy.