MBA: Three Small Letters, One Big Concept

To b (school) or not to b? A Darden MBA student tells us how her MBA journey took her out of India and into Virginia.

For those who grow up in India, the two ‘eyes’ – the IITs and the IIMs – are considered the pinnacle of higher education, to which many aspire almost by default. They are considered to be a sort of Ivy League for engineering and management in the country.

Engineering is considered to be the default option for any 'good' student in India who did well in high school and didn't quite yet figure out what their passion in life was – for those of you who were wondering why every single Indian student at Darden, for example, seems to have an undergraduate degree in engineering.

So, you struggle hard to get into an IIT; if that doesn't work out, you work for a couple of years in a software firm and try getting into an IIM. And if even that doesn't work out, after five years gaining experience in various industries, during which you don't really figure out what you want to do or even why you wanted to an MBA, you give the GMAT a go for ‘fun’.

Perhaps you end up scoring highly, well enough for consideration at a global top-10 business school, and then you think, well, everyone should do an MBA once in their life! I am easily bored by people who know everything about something, typically people who do an MS. So when I thought of getting a graduate degree, an MBA made the most sense to me. It was the perfect Jack-of-all-trades degree and I knew it would equip me with an invaluable business skillset for life.

It is often considered to be the last lap of education to complete (unless you are one of those PhD types), after which one expects a sense of ‘being settled’ in life. However, on questioning all my friends who have an MBA about this feeling of settlement, the main impression I got was that, between 6 am flights on a Monday morning, endless client calls, sales figures, proposal decks, and almost no time to spend their hard earned money, they didn't really know what that meant anymore.

So, the big question remained…To b (school) or to not b?

The MBA application process: Months of introspection and reflection

Business school! After months of research on years of inconveniently skewed rankings on different global business websites, spending too many hours on various online resources and finally making a list of two ‘dream’, two ‘might get into’ and one ‘will get into’ business schools, starts the uncomfortable application process.

I say uncomfortable because each MBA application takes months and months of introspection and reflection into long-term goals, short-term goals and why you want to do an MBA. A person who knows, or at least thinks he or she does, the precise answers to all these is… lucky.

Asking everyone else who is still trying to define their purpose on earth feels like a crime. However, with intense digging you find that, deep down, there is a vague dream you want to nurture; you hope that the MBA admissions committee doesn't think you are absolutely crazy to want to nurture it. Then begins the wait...you try every waking and sleeping minute to not think about the outcome. Inevitably, it’s all you can think about. Finally a couple of admits and a waitlist! Now you curse the choice – almost to point where you wish you had none.

Then, of course, there are the decisions between one-year and two-year MBA programs, a new country or your home city, the question of whether it is in fact more risky not to take risks, to make. Finally, you follow your instincts and decide to go to the school that was the first to send you the offer, somehow trusting their decision on wanting you the most and you somehow feel that it might be the best fit too.

Starting the MBA at Darden

You finally arrive in the land of opportunities, greeted by a royal polo match at a plush vineyard in the fairytale-like mountains of Virginia – the land of lovers they call it – and over wine and cheese and strawberries, you meet your classmates for the first time!

It is only then you suddenly feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, telling yourself that you are not in Kansas anymore. Your classmates, it seems, have done far cooler things than you, travelling to and from faraway lands. As they relate their story to you, you wonder whether you truly deserve to be there in the first place, among this stellar bunch of Wall Street investment bankers, White House advisers, US marines, Ivy League undergraduates, prestigious scholarship holders and jet setting consultants saving a few million dollars for their previous client.

But, as you start relating your journey of being a teacher in an under-resourced government school in India, the challenges you faced and the hopes and dreams you have for yourself and your country, you realize that they are equally engaged in what you are saying. And suddenly you feel like you belong.

So, the beautiful campus, sprawling lawns, historic buildings, Thomas Jefferson's legacy, exceptional faculty, amazing student apartments, fabulous firms that come to recruit (even more fabulous pay packages), top class infrastructure, the case study method, the learning teams, job treks, networking events, case interview preps, high points, low points, cold calls, breakdowns, late nighters, all nighters, parties, more parties, cultural exchanges, the countless extracurricular clubs to choose from, the endless running and biking trails, and the enriching first coffee aside, the best thing that we all will take away from these two years is friends for life!

I feel that I am ready to finally ‘b’!

About Archana Rao

Archana Rao is pursuing an MBA at Darden and will spend the summer at the Boston Consulting Group in management consulting. Prior to this she was a Teach for India fellow, maximizing holistic student achievement and championing women empowerment in low income communities. She also worked in IT project management and corporate sustainability at the HSBC Bank post pursuing electronics and telecommunication engineering. She created a Post-it cartooning website and enjoys blogging.