As you enter business school, an overwhelming feeling of stepping into a highly challenging and competitive environment may overcome you; though true to some extent, this is also the time when you will make lifelong friends. Working and learning together in teams, you will have a lot to learn from each other, and would recognize that collaboration delivers far better results.
Some of you may possibly feel that your first year in business school could be stressful. But then, stress is created in different ways, through self-inflicted academic pressure, intolerance, poor time management, setting unrealistic expectations and so on. In such a situation, you would benefit immensely by sharing your feelings with your class study group, your faculty mentors, and easily accessible members of your family. Some business schools offer counseling support where qualified counselors are available and so students needing professional help would be well advised to use such support early.
You should avoid being lulled into a false sense of complacency like assuming that your previous academic record would be a dependable forecaster of your capabilities at business school. Instead, you would be well advised to appreciate that business education is more intuitive and more nebulous than areas like engineering or accountancy. These sciences are built around clearly quantified, measurable facts, whereas, in business education, you are not only deciding on the basis of imperfect information, but very often also dealing with people issues.
While you may feel that mere academic performance is the defining benchmark of success, this is not validated by factual experience; you must also work on and develop equally important aspects of your personality like holistic self development, co-curricular learning, social skills, sensitivity to society at large, and last but not the least, team work.
Very often, like at school, you may feel that learning at business school too is similar: the faculty will teach and you will learn from them. However, the reality is that such learning takes place via three interconnected processes: from faculty, from self-study & self-analysis and from peer experience.
Again, mere gaining of admission into business school is by itself not a guarantee of your getting your dream job; the reality is that your goal of getting your dream job calls for single minded focus supported by tremendous effort and work on your part. Your placement depends on your place ability and that alone will help you in finding the job you aspire for. While the business school can facilitate the placement process, it is only you who has to face and interact with the recruiting organization on a one to one basis. You can of course make things easier for yourself by working closely with the Student Clubs and Placement Committee in your institution.
You can make the most of your business education by keeping in mind the key mantra ‘Burn to learn and learn to earn’!
Mr. I V Ranga Rao
Executive Director – Student & International Affairs
MYRA School of Business