Welcome back to Fridays from the Frontline, a weekly column where we’ll feature guest MBA student and applicant bloggers, as well as original pieces that incorporate multiple perspectives from applicants, students and recent alumni on all things MBA. As always, we welcome your contributions! Please email Jeanette or Marianne if you would like to add your voice to the mix. Many thanks to this week’s guest blogger, Rohan Rajiv from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.
This post has been republished in its entirety from “Inside Perspective,” a blog featuring contributions from the school’s full-time MBA students. Kellogg Second-year student Rohan Rajiv blogs there once a week about important lessons he is learning at Kellogg. You can read more of his posts here.
A few months ago, I wrote a letter to an incoming MBA student in an attempt to help incoming students prepare for their two years at school. I tried staying away from specific advice in that post, as the assumption was that the framework ought to work for everyone.
Today, however, I’m going to dig into my first year process and provide specifics on how I spent my first year.
Given the MBA is a $200,000 investment (not counting opportunity costs in lost income), at this time last year I was very curious about any specific “process” advice. And I was generally left disappointed as most of the advice I found online was the in the “feels-good-but-useless” category – e.g. find your passion, build great relationships, travel, dream, take risks, etc.
This post has a lot of inherent personal bias as it is what worked for me, so please take these notes with healthy doses of salt. And, yes, this will be long and dense, but I hope you find it worthwhile.
As I outlined in the previous post, there are six priorities at business school: academics, career, extracurriculars, social, framily (close friends and family) and you. I’ll go through what I’ve learned as I’ve approached these at school.
1. Academics
a) Finding classes
Make a plan
I spent four hours during winter break going through every course that I’d be interested in. After making the list, I tallied all feedback I’d received about professors whose classes I should take. I went about creating a rough two-year plan. I haven’t stuck to it. But as always, the act of making a roadmap helped a lot.
Understand historical bidding statistics
We have a bidding system, so I spent time understanding the points spent on the course-in-question in the past and also looked at the average rating of the professor. With this data, I could easily spot the over-valued and under-valued courses. My takeaway – use data where possible and invest in understanding the system.
Ask for recommendations
Early on, I asked most second-years I met for top course recommendations. This helped a lot.
b) Attending classes
Show up
I think I missed just two classes through the year. That helped a lot.
Be 100% present
My natural ADD makes it difficult to keep focus throughout a class. So I worked out a simple forcing mechanism – sit in front. This helped ensure I didn’t spend my time mucking around on my phone or laptop and also ensured I fed off the professor’s energy. This worked most of the time, and that’s what I was shooting for.
Come prepared and participate
This is part of the “be 100% present” idea. Participation is an extension of that. Now, I think I was far better prepared in my Fall quarter than later quarters. After the first couple of weeks, I began getting a sense of the level of depth required and that helped me calibrate.
c) Group meetings
Align on expectations if possible
It is always helpful to have a conversation upfront if you feel there might be misalignment on goals and priorities. I can think of a couple of experiences when having this conversation would have helped.
Don’t count group meetings as study time
This is the same concept as work meetings – use this for discussion, agreement and decisions. Don’t count it as solo study time. Bring value to a group meeting (very hard to do sometimes).
No need to be the lead in every group
Continuing of the previous thread, if you find others taking the lead in some groups, let them. Just make sure you do the same in another group.
d) Preparing for exams
Think about whether you need the textbook
I didn’t use textbooks, but I know of people who did. So this might be true just be me. I found the course pack and readings to be more than sufficient.
Attend review sessions only if absolutely necessary
I went to very few. When I did, I often chose a video as you can skip through most parts.
30 hours
I found that roughly 30 hours of study per course was sufficient to grasp the concepts and do well. This is roughly three hours per week. But for most people, you see spikes toward the end of the quarter.
Summarize lectures – single best learning
My strategy professor suggested we spend time after every class summarizing what we learnt. I’d read about this technique earlier and never tried it. While I didn’t strictly do it every class/week, I made sure I did it every time I studied. This typically happened when an assignment was due – the assignment naturally required knowledge of what had been taught in the prior couple of weeks. So, instead of diving into the answers of the assignment, I’d go back and make sure I summarized lectures first. This was an amazing move as it made it easier to make my notes to review before the exam. And in exams where we were only allowed a cheat sheet, it made the process of creating the cheat sheet really simple.
