Is This The Harvard of 2020?

Uh-oh

What To Do After You’re Admitted

It’s all starting to sink in now.

A few weeks ago, you were the embodiment of holiday spirit – smiling and laughing, sharing and comforting. You got in. And you were the center of attention. Everyone wanted to know when you’d be leaving and what you’d be studying. It all seemed so easy back then. Now, you’re looking into the details.

Whoa – and you thought the application was rough!

You have to get a loan. Find a place. Establish a budget.  Move your stuff. And that doesn’t count targeting employers, picking clubs, and building a network. So where do you start? Recently, Rohan Rajiv, a second year at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, outlined the process he went through in the pages of the Kellogg MBA Student blog.

To start, he developed five “big rock” action items – tasks that must be completed no matter what. They included getting the key people in his life on board with his decision; wrapping up his work and living arrangements before moving to Chicago; making travel arrangements; setting up accommodations in his new home; and establishing a budget.

And porting from one location to another could be particularly tricky, Rajiv noted. “This meant putting together a list of things that needed to be “closed” – home rental, all other contracts – phone, cable, utility and bank account consolidation. As soon as I felt I had a complete list, I put together a plan to get all this done since I knew I’d have limited time to get it all sorted.”

Rajiv also took a unique path with finances, dubbing it “chainsaw art.” “This just means that you don’t sweat the small details and, instead, focus on getting the big buckets right,” he writes. “As far as expenses went, the buckets that I had were – Tuition, Accommodation, Necessities, Living, Travel, and Relocation. I made some fairly standard assumptions based on my research and had a rough budget worked out.” More precisely, Rajiv focused more on using the numbers to inform behavior, rather than confine it. “My approach to finances was to not define granular budgets, but instead set clear guidelines.”

INSERT BUDGET

At the same time, Rajiv also developed priorities relating to career, academics, extracurricular activities, social life, family and friends, and marriage. He spent the least time on extracurriculars and social life, identifying a few clubs that interested him and deferring socializing until he arrived on campus. In terms of careers, he focused on the big picture – “thinking about what I really wanted to do five years out.” Hoping to transition to the tech sector, Rajiv also spent two days in the Bay Area, where people he knew introduced at various companies and asked for advice. “The governing principle here was – what got you here won’t get you there,” he writes. “So, as I met people – especially for career related conversations – and gathered perspective.”

However, before heading to Kellogg, Rajiv devoted the most time to maintaining his relationships back home. “I did 1:1 lunches/dinners with nearly every good friend. Most of these were very memorable and I remember the conversations to this day. I spent four weeks at home and that was wonderful, too. My framily always had a good sense of what’s going on and also had heads up that I might disappear for a few months as I worked to figure life at school out. I also set expectations for simple systems – regular calls with family, a whatsapp group that brought together close friends, a commitment to a half-yearly Google hangout, etc. These little things were a continuation of ideas I’d adopted while traveling for work. So it was just a matter of continuing to make the effort.”

So was Rajiv’s plan successful. He certainly believes it was. “In the final analysis, relocation did turn out to be a profound growth experience after all. It underscores a principle that I’ve seen hold true for all things in life – it is what you make of it. The nice thing about having done this once is that I’m using the exact same approach and thought process as I think about my next relocation – into full-time work after school. Yes, the six priorities change a bit and the relative importance of certain priorities changes a lot. But the frame largely works.”

To read about Rajiv’s plan in more detail, click on the Kellogg link below.

DON’T MISS: GETTING THE MOST FROM YOUR FIRST YEAR

Source: Kellogg MBA Blog

Questions about this article? Email us or leave a comment below.