So, Congratulations to all of you who have cleared one or the other institute’s written test. Most of you might have already been done with most or all of the GDs, WATs, and Interviews. Final results of some of the colleges are also out. Some of you might have got through some might have been waitlisted and are sure of clearing the waitlist. Some of you might not have got through even on the waitlist but are quite sure of converting some other call. Some might have cleared one college but are expecting a convert from some better college. So, this article is for all those who have either cleared or are sure of clearing at least one college of their choice and are enthusiastic about joining the MBA course this year i.e. 2018.
This time many of you might always be thinking and are anxious about the results but if you are sure of getting at least one college on your priority list then why to waste time thinking about results. Why not do something productive which will make you more ready when you formally join the college?
But what can be done in this 2-3 months of time? Well, you can do many things at this time. You can take up some courses, you can learn some data analysis tools like MS Excel, you can write some articles for some magazines, you can gain an idea of what are the courses that you can do while you will be doing your MBA which will enhance your skills, knowledge, and profile as well, you can find out many other aspects of business education and different kinds of training that many business professionals undergo during their career. There can be various other things as well that are not related to the academics or your future MBA curriculum.
But here I will focus on what are some of the academic and skill enhancing courses you can do so that you become somewhat familiar with the business courses and soft skills particularly if you have never taken any business or related courses in your college or elsewhere.
You can start by learning
"Managerial Economics". There are various sources from which you can start it but I recommend taking this course from NPTEL namely
“Foundation Course in Managerial Economics” by
Prof. Barnali Nag, Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur. Here is the link
http://nptel.ac.in/syllabus/110105075/
The course has videos which you can download or can watch online and some assignments are also there with very insightful questions. You will definitely enjoy this course. This course can be completed in 10-15 days in a relaxed manner. The professor has made this lesson extremely interesting by giving some well thought real-life examples.
Another source for studying Managerial Economics can be “edx.org” and the
6-Week online course provided by Prof Subhashish Gupta, IIM Bangalore. The This link for this course is:
https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-managerial-economics
Here you can also obtain a certificate after paying the required amount of money. But, nevertheless, you can learn from both these courses absolutely free.
There can be other sources as well but I chose these two sources for all of you because these courses start from very basic and build very strong foundations.
Now the second subject that you should learn (particularly if you are from a non-commerce background and more so if you are an engineer !!!) is
“Accounts”.
If you are interested I would recommend you to study from
NCERT Book of Class 11th and 12th (Accounts). You can buy these books or you can download them free of cost from the NCERT website. If you can complete these books then you would gain a fairly good idea of Accounting.
If you are not interested to read NCERT Book or if you after reading those books want to go for some online course, I would suggest going for
“Introduction to Accounting – Part 1: Basics of Financial Statements” by IIM Bangalore on “edx.org”. Here is the link.
https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-accounting-part-1-basics-iimbx-ac101-1x-0
The second course which I strongly recommend to do is
“Financial Accounting and Analysis” again by IIM Bangalore. Below is the link :
https://www.edx.org/course/financial-accounting-and-analysis
If you want to go international and want to study from some top professors then you should go for the course
“Introduction to Financial Accounting” by
Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) in Coursera. Here is the link:
https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-accounting
All the above course will give you a decent idea about the accounting basics which is quite challenging to learn in a trimester and that too when your schedule will be very packed up. So, if you have prior familiarity it will make your life a little easier in the B-School. “If you start early, half the battle is won”, I am not sure that half the battle will be won or not but even if you can ensure 10% chances of winning by starting early, it’s an opportunity worth taking.
Now, lets come to another important aspect of business education which is
“Business Communications”. There are two sources you can use to have a grounding in this subject.
First one is a course
“Business Fundamentals- Effective Communication” in a MOOC called “Future Learn”. Here is the link:
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/effective-communication/5/welcome
The second course is offered by
University of British Columbia (UBC) namely “ Business Communications” again in the edx platform. Here is the link :
https://www.edx.org/course/business-communications-ubcx-bus2x
Now let’s come to learning
MS Excel and Data Analysis. For learning MS Excel, I would recommend a course in
Udemy. The course name is “Microsoft Excel- Excel from Beginner to Advanced”. You can do this course by paying a nominal fee. All the other courses that I have mentioned above are completely free. Here is the link to the excel course:
https://www.udemy.com/microsoft-excel-2013-from-beginner-to-advanced-and-beyond/
This course will not take more than one week to complete. Now, after completing this course, if you want to learn some data analysis skills, you can complete the
3 Courses offered by Microsoft itself (the guy who teaches this course is one of the senior developers of MS Excel itself !). The course in available in the edx platform. I am posting a single link which will take you to that page in which you can see all the 3 courses
https://www.edx.org/xseries/microsoft-excel-data-analyst
After completing this course, you will become very confident in excel for sure!
Now apart from all these courses, I would like to suggest one course which many of you will not study in your B-School (Some might study depending on the college and electives and specialization they take up). The course is
“Behavioural Economics in Action” by Professor Dilip Soman of Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Canada.
I can mention some other things as well that you can do in other subjects like Marketing, Operations, and Finance, but I think that would make this whole exercise null and void as all those will make our learning a burden rather than enjoyment.
You don’t need to do everything that I mentioned above. If you are able to do even some of them, it’s fine and you are learning something which will help you to better appreciate the MBA course when you join after few weeks. Don’t get into the race to complete everything, just be calm and do whatever you can complete because life is not always about sadness, rat race or excitement, sometimes it’s about calmness and serenity as well.
So, all the best! May you get the college of your choice.