The MBA Summit: Vetting Top MBA Programs - Poets&Quants

 
What advice would you give a prospective student who is just beginning to look at MBA programs?

How did you select the schools that would receive your application?

What, if anything, would you do differently in your MBA journey?

What’s surprised you most about the MBA experience?

Those questions and more formed the basis of an extraordinary MBA Summit panel sponsored by Poets&Quants and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. Livestreamed on May 1 before a global audience from Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus, the discussion featured four MBA students from Michigan Ross, Yale SOM, and UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

AMAZON, GOOGLE AND MCKINSEY EXECUTIVES ON WHAT THEY’RE LOOKING FOR IN MBA HIRES

Moderated by Poets&Quants founder and editor John A. Byrne, the panel included:  Ariana Almas, who just graduated from Michigan’s Ross School of Business. She came to the MBA program from a nonprofit, Year Up, a national workforce development organization. After interning at Microsoft, Almas will be joining the company at its Redmond, Washington, headquarters. Alma was among 100 MBA graduates this year named to Poets&Quant’s Best & Brightest list.

Before going to Yale SOM, Nate Micon had worked for Greenwich Strategy, a boutique management consulting firm. He joined Boston Consulting Group’s New York office after earning his MBA from Yale in May.

Tam Emerson just completed the first year of the MBA program at UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.  She had been executive director of the Segal Citizen Leadership Program at Brandeis University.

Ramu Annamalai graduated from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business this month and rejoined Deloitte Consulting. He started his career out of Georgia Tech as a management consultant with Deloitte’s Strategy & Operations division primarily in the financial service industry.

The student session was among a trio of MBA Summit panels, which also included the perspective of leading MBA admission directors (see How To Get Into A Top Business School) and major MBA employers (see What Amazon, Google and McKinsey Want From MBA Hires).

What follows is an edited transcript of our MBA student discussion:

John A. Byrne: Three of you have already been through the full two-year experience. One of you has just completed the most grueling part of it, the core curriculum. So tell me, how did you decide that you wanted the full-time MBA to begin with?

Ariana Almas earned her MBA from the Ross School of Business this month

Ariana Almas: I worked in the non-profit sector for five years before coming to Michigan Ross. I remember there was a very distinct moment where I had just gotten a new role. I was in it for about a few months, and I just started to realize that I was learning more than I was able to contribute. So the amount of value I was able to bring to the organization was starting to plateau, and I thought what could I do to build up my skillset, build my knowledge so that I would be able to continuously bring value back to the organization that I truly cared about.

That was a big decision for me, and I remember at the time it was very serendipitous. I was talking to a friend who had just moved to Boston. I was in the Bay Area. She started grad school, and she was talking about all these experiences and everything that she was learning, and it just clicked for me. I was like, “I think I’m ready to go to school.”

Business school for me was the natural choice because, again, I was working in the non-profit sector for an organization called Year Up that supports young adults from historically-marginalized backgrounds, preparing them for the corporate space. So the way I saw it, I was working on diversity and inclusion efforts through the non-profit side and I wanted to transfer that knowledge and experience over to the for-profit side, and I thought, “What better way to do that than to go through the MBA?”

Byrne: Tam, you are also a nontraditional student who came from a nonprofit as well. What was your thinking about what the MBA was all about before you actually got to Berkeley Haas?

Tam Emerson: I was very similar to Ariana, and I didn’t ever imagine going to grad school. I’m a first-generation college student and it was a hurdle even to get to that point. So the idea of going to graduate school was something I only understood once I started working in higher education at Brandeis University. Seeing the students working and interacting with first-year master and public policy students flipped the switch that there was some potential there.

I felt like I was a team of one running an incredible leadership development program that was national. I brought a lot of excitement to it but most of the time I was making it up as I went along. I had the ethic and the drive for it, but there was a point that I felt like, “How is this fair to the organization for me to not think about what else could happen under a new leader?” But even thinking about business school felt very overwhelming. I didn’t understand the process all that well, and I didn’t really feel like I had too many people other than some very amazing mentors to help guide me through the process. So it took a little bit of time, but I’m really, really excited that I did it.

Byrne: Well, coming from the non-profit world, I imagine you may have had a less-than-stellar idea of what business school was about.

Emerson: I had a very general understanding that I was going to learn things like marketing and accounting, but I didn’t have much of an understanding of the rigor of it. I don’t think I had an understanding of the whole-hearted and well-rounded nature that a leader could gain because I was seeing management done in the non-profit world for my entire life.

I didn’t quite understand that business school would make me dive in as deep as it did to places that I didn’t even think I would go myself. I don’t think I’m going to become a marketer or jump into investment banking, but I knew that gaining better business acumen would make me stronger. And it took me time to figure out what that would look like.

Byrne: Nate and Ramu both were in consulting before business school, and in fact you’re both going back into consulting fairly soon. So we have two fairly mainstream MBAs here as well. Ramu, how did you determine fit? There’s this sort of intangible but important aspect of choosing a program that has to do with chemistry, your inner gut, and how you feel about a school. How did you make that work for you?

Ramu Annamalai has rejoined Deloitte after earning his MBA from Ross this month

Ramu Annamalai: I think fit for me really started with understanding myself and my story and what I wanted. And that takes a lot of time. You need to do a lot of soul-searching to understand what do you want in a program, what do you even want with the MBA, what do you want to get out of it. Why is this even making sense in your part of your life? And whether you can you do what you want without it? Of course, I’m an engineer, I’m a consultant, and I had lots of spreadsheets and models. But I have in my spreadsheet a personal story. I have my idea of what I’m most proud of, my strengths and weaknesses.

Byrne: In a spreadsheet?

Annamalai: Of course. It’s all very organized.

Almas: Classic.

Annamalai: But I think at first it takes understanding who you are, what you want in life, and then building that out: What’s your 10-year vision and bringing that back down to a two-year chapter. And then when you’re looking at a school, it’s how does that school align with you?

And so I think fit is something we already toss around, but it can be kind of an ambiguous idea. To me, fit is kind of that gut instinct. It’s Thinking fast and slow, as (psychologist Daniel) Kahneman puts it. For me, it was when I went to sell weekend. I went to two schools, and I kind of saw really the dynamics of individuals and the culture. When I came to Michigan there was a certain level of energy that I really gravitated towards that I didn’t get at other schools. And there really was that gut feeling. So all my spreadsheets went out the door, and it really was that “a-ha” moment where you think, “This is what I want to be a part of.”

DON’T MISS: THE MBA SUMMIT: HOW TO GET INTO A TOP BUSINESS SCHOOL or THE MBA SUMMIT: WHAT AMAZON, GOOGLE & MCKINSEY REALLY WANT FROM MBA HIRES

Ariana Almas (top left) of Michigan Ross, Nate Micon (bottom left) of Yale SOM, Ramu Annamalai of Michigan Ross, and Tam Emerson of Berkeley Haas

Byrne: Nate, how about you?

Nate Micon: I actually feel a little bit happy I did not make any spreadsheets. When I started going through the process, I started speaking with students I already knew as well as reaching out blindly to people that were on the websites. And I started figuring out who I was clicking with, what drove and what motivated the people at some of the different schools, and how they spoke about their programs.

Then, once I went on campus, honestly, there was a very clear moment when Yale just clicked with me. I walked away from the interview actually excited, and I don’t think I’ve ever really walked away from an interview other than nervous, but I was super excited, and I could see myself there. I think there’s something just very intangible that you feel at the right program, something that speaks to you that is impossible to put into a spreadsheet. So I’d encourage everyone to do your research, winnow down schools based on high-level criteria, like you want a school that excels in whatever aspects you’re looking for or is located in whatever cities you’re looking for. But then you just need to kind of throw your hands up and immerse yourself in the student body there and see what they talk about, and how the community clicks with you. And there will definitely be a school that just resonates more with you than others, because every school has its own culture, its own norms, its own guiding principles that will speak to you.

Byrne: What comes through in both your stories is the importance of actually going to a campus and meeting the students and faculty, and getting a real true feel for what that school could be like for you.

Annamalai: Or if you’re an international student, getting in touch with some of the alumni or current students if you’re not able to go and visit campus. How many times have I got an email either on LinkedIn or a random email saying, “Let’s connect”? I’m happy to talk to anybody about Ross.

Byrne: And Ariana, did you use certain tools to decide if Ross was right for you?

Ariana Almas: Yeah. I was told to use certain tools so I did use certain tools.

Byrne: What do you mean, told?

Almas: From folks that had gone through the process. They were like, “You have to make the spreadsheet, figure out your story, your journey.” That actually didn’t work for me as well. I think I’m a little offbeat perhaps for the MBA program, but I’m more of a see-where-things-go kind of person, not a 10-year-plan person. That stresses me out. I am very spontaneous and go with the flow. So I had my spreadsheets and I felt ready to go. And then based on the spreadsheet I had a very different set of schools I began looking at. When I arrived in Michigan, it was very similar to what Nate and Ramu were saying. I interacted with one student who was my host. She hosted me in her home. I remember I came back from the day. I started making up the sofa, and she came in and stared at me, and she said, “What are you doing?” And I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’m not doing it right. Maybe I should be out. Should I be doing something else?” And she said, “You’re sleeping in my bed. I’m sleeping on the sofa. You need your rest. This is a big weekend for you.” I was shocked and blown away. My own brothers won’t give me their bed. So that was a moment for me. I think that’s when the gut starts to speak, because I realized this is someone that barely knows me and has already given me so much while bringing me into her home. And she’s also at Microsoft, where I’ll be going after school. So she’s gonna be a mentor for life.

That was a really key moment for me because I’ve not experienced that ever in my life, to have someone offer their own bed to me when I was visiting and I’d just met this person. It made me realize that this is someone I want to model myself after. And I gave my bed to a friend who’s now at Ross the year after, and I imagine that she will do the same.

Byrne: So Tam, how important was culture in determining the right fit for you?

Tam Emerson just completed the first year of her MBA program at UC-Berkeley Haas

Tam Emerson: It was probably the number one piece that I as looking at when it came to making the right decision. Similar to Ariana there were tools that I wish I had known about, particular things like Management Leaders for Tomorrow, opportunities that I could have used to help me better hone some of these pieces that I didn’t quite understand. So it really did come down to a lot for things like fit and culture. I did a lot of looking. I think that it’s hard sometimes on a school website to feel like, “Is this authentically what the school does, or you had a marketing officer put on a piece of paper,” who are incredibly intelligent and thoughtful people, but sometimes there still can be that disconnect. And so for me it was connecting with people and the culture of Haas. We have four defining principles that I thought were some of my own values. It wasn’t that I’m looking at something and saying, “Oh, I’d love to aspire to these.”

The dean right now will openly talk about the process he went through. It was about serving our current population, our faculty, our staff, and our students and saying, “How would you describe what we have here?” and then he created the principles off of that, whereas all too often companies or organizations say, “Here are our values and we’re working towards them one day. We aspire to do these things. We aspire to live these things and be these things,” versus a place that said, “We are just describing what already exists.” You could feel it as soon as you got there. You feel it in the students.

I have a very similar story as Ariana about the student weekend at Haas. But it was different. I was paired with two other incoming students, all of us were part of the Consortium for Graduate Management Study. When we got there, we were all scared. One admit was looking through her luggage and after traveling for months, she couldn’t find shoes. It was a very dumb moment for me in a similar way where I was just like, “Oh, well, I’ve got a pair. Take them.” There was kind of automatically this feeling of, “I’ve got your back. You’ve got mine. We’re here to do this together.” And that culture then just permeated throughout the weekend. At the other schools I visited, I just didn’t feel that the same way.

Byrne: One thing I like about your collective backgrounds is that you very much represent what people want out of an MBA. Many people go into a program hoping to use the degree to transition out of a career. Some people make the so-called “triple jump” where they transition out of a company, an industry, and a geography. And then some people want to accelerate their careers. Nate and Ramu, I think you two fall in that category since you’re both going to stay in the consulting industry. But for Tam and Ariana, was the degree a way to help propel you out of the nonprofit world?

Almas: I actually love the nonprofit sector. I hope to transition back in the future or get involved in some sort of way. But I saw the work that we were doing had limited impact, because you’re kind of an outsider trying to affect the corporate world. And I wanted to be in the corporate world to be an advocate and champion there for diversity, equity, and inclusion, among other things. So when I was looking at programs I wanted a program that had a really strong human capital focus, a program that was dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and that actually had some really tangible centers or resources. A few things stood out to me at Michigan: Number one is that you’re able to take classes at other schools. That was very important to me. I wanted to take an interdisciplinary focus with my MBA, and I’ve been able to take classes in education and at the law school. That was number one.

Number two, we have the amazing Center for Positive Organizations here, which I got involved in as a fellow. Their whole purpose is around how can you bring out the best in your employees so that they could bring out the best in the company. In the non-profit sector, we struggle with that because you’re really dedicated to a mission and you sort of forget about your own needs. I definitely used to ascribe by that, and then I started to get burned out. The Center for Positive Organizations I thought was really great, because they have a lot of amazing theory and research and they bring in practitioners all the time, and we have positive link talks.

And then the last thing was human capital and HR because that was the space I wanted to go into. Not all schools have that as a large focus, so I really wanted to zero in on schools that had that. We have a Human Capital Club. We have fact groups here at Ross where second-years are prepared for certain industries through our career services office, and there are two human capital fact groups.

Byrne: So you may not have a done a spreadsheet, but you did one in a head.

Almas: I guess I had one in my head. I had a checklist.

DON’T MISS: THE MBA SUMMIT: HOW TO GET INTO A TOP BUSINESS SCHOOL or THE MBA SUMMIT: WHAT AMAZON, GOOGLE & MCKINSEY REALLY WANT FROM MBA HIRES

Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan

Byrne: Nate, you actually left a boutique consulting firm and now you’re using your MBA to transition into Boston Consulting Group. Did you know you wanted to continue with consulting when you enrolled in the MBA program at Yale?

Micon: I wasn’t 100% dead set on going into consulting. I was open to exploring some other things. I think that’s one of the important things to consider when you go to school. Even if you have a strong intuition of what you want to do, it’s helpful to stay open throughout the process. Not just about your career choices, but being open to all types of experiences because it’s a special two years that you’ll never get to repeat. There’s so many opportunities to test your boundaries, discover and learn new things, and approach the world in different ways. I think it’s important to always keep your mind open to that.

Nate Micon graduated this month from Yale’s School of Management with his MBA

I was open to other careers, but I strongly wanted to go into consulting. As I started going through the recruiting and networking process, I very quickly reminded myself why I was in consulting. Looking forward five years or so, I asked where do I see myself? I hope to go into public policy or something in economic policy in Washington, D.C. I feel like consulting is definitely a good base to get you there.

Byrne: And Ramu, you worked at Deloitte and now you’re going back to Deloitte. I need to tell people that if you go back to Deloitte after coming from Deloitte, you are basically reimbursed for your entire tuition plus interest. That’s a really great deal.

Annamalai: It is a good deal. In terms of Deloitte’s model from consultant to senior consultant, you typically have an up-or-out model. We’ve moved away from that so you have an option to stay with the firm. If you are going to leave the firm, you need to think really critically about what it is about yourself you need to have, in terms of business school, to fill those gaps. That’s why I talk about those strengths and weaknesses. What are the areas of competencies you want to fill in with business schools.

I think the other component of is what do you need to get out of business school. For me, it was the business fundamentals, the rigor of core accounting and finance courses. I did my bachelor’s degree in engineering. I knew the future of what I was going into in consulting was how financial service firms are increasingly thinking of themselves as technology companies. I wanted more experience in technology strategy and business model innovation. Those were courses that really resonated with me.

Byrne: Let’s go back to that spreadsheet you put together. Did you weigh such factors as academics, the co-curriculars, the career outcomes of different schools?

Annamalai: Oh yeah. I had a very rigorous matrix system and I had ratings for each of those that gave me a ranking. I did the same thing that probably a lot of rating companies are doing. You’re taking a very abstract idea of a school and you’re picking competencies on the incoming GMAT scores, the outgoing salaries, and boiling it down to a number. I was trying to do the same thing but on a personal level. What matters more to me? Is it location or is it culture? Is it the curriculum or is it the ranking itself? Those all have individual ratings and then I boil that down. But like I said, that went out the door.

Byrne: Right because it’s less about the result and more about the process and how that leads you to think about the different programs.

Annamalai: Yeah.

Byrne: That makes total sense. Tam, there are a number of different types of experiences in an MBA program. Experiential learning is a very big and important part of it. There also are case studies, lectures, immersion trips. What resonated with you in your first year?

Emerson: I really believe that simply reading hundreds of pages of paper and going into a classroom and having people talk at you is not an ideal way to learn. For me, at Ross, one of the things that stood out was our international business development course, which a good chunk of our students do and I am lucky to have been into it.

Byrne: Plus you’re going to Uganda soon.

Emerson: Yes, I leave in 10 days for Uganda where I will be there for three weeks with a team of four or five of my classmates. We’ll look at the country’s current state of tourism and create a business strategy that focuses on marketing. We’ll find out what’s working and what’s not. We’ve done a lot of rigorous research and it’s been really interesting. We’ll be in the communities talking to everybody that we can, doing interviews every day. I think that that opportunity to then put all that together and come back and present a plan is the best way to put all of these core classes into action.

Byrne: I should ask you Ariana because  at Michigan Ross, one of the quintessential elements of the MBA experience is experiential. It’s the so called MAP program. What did you do in MAP?

Almas: I worked on an education focused NGO in Cambodia. It was founded by a young woman who had survived the genocide in Cambodia. She went on to be very successful and had a moment in her life where she had noticed some children that were on a dump site. They were collecting garbage to try to find some food yp eat. She created this nonprofit to provide holistic services to lift children out of poverty. That was towards the last quarter of our first year. I had gone through the core. I had gotten my internship. I kind of wanted to go back to my social impact roots, but I wanted to challenge myself a little bit outside my comfort zone. I had never done international work. I’ve not done a lot of traveling, period. I was a little nervous to think about how to apply some of these concepts and the nonprofit work I had done domestically abroad and see what could be applied and what couldn’t.

I spent about a week there and got to visit all of the different sites the nonprofit was supporting. We worked on a fundraising plan for them. It’s interesting because in nonprofit you do fundraising and in for profit you obviously are revenue generating but there was a lot of concepts we were able to translate over. I became the go to person on the team because I had the nonprofit experience and I worked in corporate engagement so, I was able to bring a lot of my background into the work.

I also want to speak, just briefly, about another program I did immediately after my first year. It’s called Ross Open Road. It used to be called MBAs Across America. It was founded by a couple of Harvard folks. It used to bring together students from different MBAs and then they would hit the road in the US and support small businesses and entrepreneurs. Again, I’m much more focused on domestic work. I’ve not had a lot of international experience. I think there’s a lot of challenges in our own country, in our own society. I really wanted to dive deep into that. Immediately after MAP, I hit the road with three of my classmates and we started working for small businesses in Detroit. We have our new class this year. They just started this week. We focus on supporting a black-owned business in Chicago. Went to a Buffalo meat manufacturer in South Dakota. That was a really interesting experience for me as well, because it did force me to apply everything that I learned in a week for a small business. Small business is not something you talk about a lot in the MBA programs. We’re focused more on larger organizations and corporations. For small businesses, you need to create something that’s is going to move the needle for them. It was an amazing experience to apply what we learned and to make it super tangible and applicable to a business.

DON’T MISS: THE MBA SUMMIT: HOW TO GET INTO A TOP BUSINESS SCHOOL or THE MBA SUMMIT: WHAT AMAZON, GOOGLE & MCKINSEY REALLY WANT FROM MBA HIRES

Ariana Almas (top left) of Michigan Ross, Nate Micon (bottom left) of Yale SOM, Ramu Annamalai of Michigan Ross, and Tam Emerson of Berkeley Haas

Byrne: Ramu, how about you?

Annamalai: I think business schools in general are thinking about how they can integrate new components into their curriculum, outside of just pure finance, pure accounting. You can get that online. You can go to Udemy, Coursera. How do you actually integrate that into te classroom experience? At Ross, every class has some type of action-based learning component that I think is really important.

Part of that is knowing myself. I learn best by doing. I think a lot of us do. One of the classes I took, Data Insights & Analytics, was taught by a professor who has his own consulting company. He brings in outside casework and formats that into a classroom setting. He gives us actual data that he’s used, very hairy data sets. He wants us to present the recommendation with insights every week. These are actual cases that he’s looked at so he has real recommendations. The professor pushed us to not just provide accurate insights, but also to be selling the next project. Think about what you are going to deliver to get that next project out to them.

Byrne: It’s often said that the MBA experience is transformative, that it truly changes not only your outlook on business, but even who you are and who you want to become. Nate, how has the MBA changed you?

Micon: I think it has changed the way I lead and the way that I interact with people. One is, the core lasts a year and you are with the same people, the same cohort. The same small learning team for an entire year. You kick off that year in a small week long course called Managing Groups and Teams, where you go through a lot of trials with this group of eight people that you work with throughout the entire year.

Spending an entire year with a group of eight people really teaches you a lot about yoursel, how to lead and when you should lead. You learn different ways for people to effectively communicate with teams. And because those experiences are within one cohort, it’s really a safe space to ask questions to understand how different people approach problems. You develop really deep relationships with people. Rather than treating every single project as a transaction, you’re trying to really get to know your teammates and network with them. It helps you understand their motivations, how they think, and how they approach problems, which not only makes you a better teammate, it can also push and inspire you to lead in different ways.

Another thing that is really nice about SOM and the way their curriculum is set up is that because it’s so integrated with Yale University, there are a lot of not only joint degree students but a lot of people who aren’t even in business school in all of your classes. I think being around people who don’t have the exact same outlook on life or the same exact thought process forces you to not only better explain yourself but makes you open to different ways of approaching a problem.

A lot of the ways that I’ve changed isn’t necessarily that I know corporate finance or accounting or marketing better, it’s that I can think about problems more holistically. I can work with people across a range of backgrounds. I push myself to communicate with people in ways that I wouldn’t have communicated before. I’ve taken on problems and I’ve taken classes that I never would have taken before. I’ve been encouraged by people. The experience has broadened my horizons, fundamentally made me more introspective and helped me to redefine what leadership looks like.  All those non-quantifiable, non-hard skills are really what I’ve taken out of the MBA program. I think it’s nice because, again, you can go online and take a Coursera course on accounting, but getting those soft skills are really important, especially as you continue to progress in your career. I noticed the bifurcation of people when I was at my firm before school. People who had MBAs were more likely to have those soft skills and some of them were effective leaders and very good at motivating and very good at helping you progress and develop and the others weren’t.

Byrne: Tam, you’re midway through your transformative experience. Do you feel changed in any way?

Emerson: I definitely feel changed. One thing that’s also important to convey is that no one discusses how hard it’s going to be. No one talked about how emotionally, physically, mentally difficult the experience will be. I think everybody wants to put a really nice ribbon on an MBA and say it was the best two years of their life. I think I will walk out having said that, undoubtedly, but I don’t think anyone changes without growing. It’s called growing pains for a reason. If growing was easy, if there was no tribulation in it, then no one would have really learned much of anything, anyway.

At one point, I finished a mid-term and did not feel great about it. I went to my study team and said, it went okay. And one of my classmates said to me, “Tam, how dare you come out of the weekend and not feel good about this exam and you didn’t call me. I was sitting at home all day on Saturday. I would have come over and sat with you for five, six, seven, eight hours until you understood that material. I’m here for you. Would you let me be here for you.”

Byrne: Ramu, what advice would you give a prospective student who is just beginning to look at MBA programs?

Annamalai: Start early. For me, this process took a lot of soul searching. It’s a grueling process. You need to be prepared for those recommendation letters. You need to be able to prepare your recommenders for the essay they write. That all takes time. Even before this, a lot of introspection is important to understand yourself and what you want. So, start early. Get the GMAT out of the way if you can.

Talk to people. If you can visit the campus, visit the campus. Start those conversations. Build a tracker of who you’re talking to and keep notes on what they’re saying. Build that profile of what the school is to you. It’s not what someone else tells you it is; you have to write your own persona for the school and how you think you fit with it. Fit is a two-way street. It’s not only how you think your values align with the school but how the school’s values align with you. Once you actually get to that stage, hopefully in early August or so, you feel ready for your round one applications so you can really knock them out. You understand what your strengths are and what you want to get out of your essays, your recommender letters, and your resume. Staring early is the best advice.

Byrne: Ariana, do you have any advice?

Almas: Something that I don’t think is said enough is to, if you are able to go visit the schools, go during a non-admissions, set-up weekend. They’re putting on the best shows. If you really want to get a sense of a place, go when the best outfits aren’t on and that’s when you can really start to observe people in their natural habitats in school. You get to see those little things that really contribute to what the culture is.

Almas: I love that advice and what I might suggest is that if you can go a few days before the admitted students weekend you get that. By talking to current students, you’re not really ever talking to someone who is going to be your classmate. By going during an admitted student’s weekend, I think one of the things I was most eager to see is, who was I going to sit next to in class? So, I think that at least going to the admitted students set-up gave me a more realistic view of who they’d be.

Then the only thing I’d add is that I looked for schools that I could be a trailblazer at. I was clear that a lot of the direction I was coming from and going toward was not going be strictly business. That’s why I like that business is becoming more interdisciplinary and more nuanced. I felt it Ross, where I could go and be a trailblazer and set up a new path and not feel like I was an anomaly. At Ross, I felt celebrated, respected and supported.

Byrne: Tam, you’re going to Uganda. Ariana, you went to Cambodia. Nate and Ramu, were global opportunities important to you in selecting an MBA program? If so, did you participate in any?

Micon: I think global opportunities were certainly important. The world is becoming increasingly global and learning how to interact with people all over the world is obviously important. I think there are a few different opportunities that I took advantage of at SOM. Most obviously, I did an international experience trip. At Yale, you’re required to have some type of global studies requirement, so I took a class and then went to Israel. The class was a quarter long and it was focused on the history and culture of the Middle East broadly and then in Israel specifically.

When we went there, we learned a lot about their start-up culture. We met with a lot of founders and a lot of different start-ups, as well as different governmental organizations and some diplomats to get a broader understanding of the area. What I really took out of that class were two things:

The class was composed of 30 or so students, and it was the first time we started mixing class outside of our cohort. Just a group of 14 of us went to Jordan first, and we were in the desert for two days without cell phones. It was the first time for over a half a year that I just had to stop and put my phone away because we couldn’t use it. We sat around a campfire and just talked and talked about why we were in school and what motivated us. Where we came from and where we saw the world. Getting into those deep conversations is when it initially clicked people who are around you all the time have very different perspectives and have very different motivations. It’s a disservice to kind of be next the somebody for six months and not really get to know them on a deeper level. I think that’s when I started realizing the importance of getting to know your classmates and getting to know the people that you work with. I think in that sense, it was very transformative.

Another thing. Another way that I really think that I’ve learned to operate more globally is, just the sheer number of people who go to school with me, who are not from the United States or have a foreign passport. At Yale, it’s like 50%. So, you’re forced to interact and learn how different people approach different problems. There’s obviously within the curriculum, a lot of global cases and you’ll talk about multinationals and you’ll take classes on being a global team and how different teams can overcome cross cultural barriers. When you’re a small learning team of four people, half of them are not from the United States. That right there is an opportunity that you have to learn how to work on a global team. That just pushes you from day one. You can’t shield yourself from it because it’s all international all around you.

Annamalai: I think that’s a good point. Working with international students definitely gives you a new dynamic in your group settings. I went to Peru. I went to Norway. That being said, I did do some work in Deloitte internationally. I worked in London for a little bit. Then my internship was at Prodigy Finance, an international student lending company. In that capacity, I was really able to interface with people from London, from the South Africa office and our chief business development officer was really focused on developing that idea of how do we work across borders. He recommends a book called The Culture Map, which I think is a really fantastic read. It talks about the differences in culture. How communication styles are very different from an implicit and explicit communication styles and how do you kind of navigate that pathway.

Byrne: We’re running out of time but we have a couple of questions from our audience. Given what you know now, what if anything would you do differently in your MBA journey? Ariana, do you wanna tackle that?

Almas: One of the things I do regret and I wish I’d done more of was just really prioritizing my mental and physical and emotional health while I was here.  I think it’s something that we don’t talk about a lot in different business programs and even in business in general. At Microsoft, where I was this summer, wellness was very important. I didn’t realize it until a month ago, but our counseling and psychological services are right across the street from my dorm. If I had known that, I’d like to think I would’ve gone more often. I’m trying to take advantage of it before I leave and build some really good habits. I think that’s something that is really important. It is a transformative experience but it’s also grueling and there are hard times. You’re not surrounded by the folks that have helped you get here. Taking advantage of that and just making sure that you’re prioritizing the things that are important to you, whether it be your mental and physical health, is really important.

Byrne: Tam, do you have advice?

Emerson: What would I change so far? It’s more of what I would have done to prepare to come in. I didn’t even recognize that there was going to be a different language I would have to learn. I really wish I would have done something as simple as picked up a few business books beforehand so that when I got here I didn’t feel so much like I was a fish out of water trying to both learn a new language and meet all these people and figure out which co-curricular things I would be involved in. That would have been pretty simple to have done.

Byrne: Ramu, here’s a question from someone on Facebook. What’s surprised you most about the MBA experience?

Annamalai: My brother has a PhD and he saw his friends at Wharton having a really fun time and said, ‘Oh those business school kids. All they do is just party.’ Our classes are tough. They are academically rigorous. It can be grueling. That on top of the recruiting and the networking, on top of the stress of actually just living away from you hometown, can all kind of pile up on you. You need to have your own space. Your own time. Set some time on your calendar to have some personal space and time. Maybe some gym time or a phone call with your wife or girlfriend. You need that time as well because this is mentally and physically grueling.

Byrne: Nate, biggest surprise for you?

Micon: I think what surprised me is, you come in and you have all these expectations, like that everything is going to be different and that you have all of these opportunities. I think it’s very easy to kind of fall into whatever your niche is and kind of stay in your little silo or in your track, even though there’s 300 really interesting people around you. If you’re not very conscious about it, I think it’s very easy to go through the motions every single day. Go to class and do your homework and hang out with your group of friends that you’ve met at the very beginning of the year and never really expand your horizons. Which, I think, is a real shame if you go ahead and do that. If you aren’t conscious about how you’re spending your time and you don’t prioritize your time correctly, it’s very easy to just kind of go through the motions and just check a lot of boxes, without really pushing yourself and consciously trying to make sure that you’re going down the path that you set out for yourself. I think the biggest surprise is how important it is to really know yourself at all times. Know what you’re trying to get out of the day, out of the week, out of the month.

Byrne: That’s great advice. Believe it or not, our time has run out. I think that you’ve provided a lot of valuable insight and perspective to people out there that might be considering this degree. I do think it is a transformative experience and I can judge by your comments that none of you have any remorse about this whatsoever.

DON’T MISS: THE MBA SUMMIT: HOW TO GET INTO A TOP BUSINESS SCHOOL or THE MBA SUMMIT: WHAT AMAZON, GOOGLE & MCKINSEY REALLY WANT FROM MBA HIRES

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