“I’m In … Now What?” Pre-MBA Traveling

My Wishlist

I haven’t booked my travel just yet, but, I’ve narrowed my list to a few trips that span the full spectrum of our travel matrix:

1) Long Weekend in Montauk (Traveling Yogi / ∞ / $): Montauk’s Ditch Plains is a famous surfing beach, but it’s also a great spot to chill out and just watch the waves while eating a wrap from the iconic Ditch Witch.

2) Hiking in Machu Picchu (Adventure Seeker / ∞∞ / $$): Catching the sunrise at Machu Picchu and hiking to the surrounding Incan ruins has been on my must-do list for a while.

3) Volunteering in Costa Rica (Global Giver /  ∞∞∞ / $$): There are some great opportunities to volunteer in Costa Rica, including teaching English, saving sea turtles, and working on a coffee farm.

4) Backpacking Southeast Asia (Adventure Seeker / ∞∞∞ / $$$):  Southeast Asia is very appealing because you can incorporate so many different types of travel experiences into one trip. One week you can get your PADI Open Water Certification in Thailand and the next you can explore the over 2,000 Buddhist temples of the Bagan plains in Myanmar.

While I’d love to go on all of these trips, time and money constraints force me to be even more selective. A weekend in Montauk is doable since it’s so close to New York and relatively low cost. When it comes to Machu Picchu, there is a strong chance I’ll do this trip during business school. Volunteering in Costa Rica sounds awesome, but I really want to help out on a coffee farm, and the main coffee harvesting and processing work is done from November to May. Southeast Asia looks like a versatile destination that can satisfy the cravings of a split travel personality, so I’ve taken the next steps towards planning this trip.

Planning Tips

Don’t forget to check what travel opportunities there will be during business school. If you’ve got your heart set on your school’s trek to Patagonia, you can safely take that off your list for the summer (plus, it’s really cold in Patagonia this time of year).

It’s a good idea to get a grasp of what business school means for your financial situation. You may discover that you have more resources available than you initially thought. I’ve created a useful tool that can help you with this, check out my previous article “I’m In … Now What? How to Pay for Business School”.

Hopefully, after considering your traveler type and your time vs. cost constraints, the question of “Where are you going to travel before business school?” becomes much easier to answer.

Rex Carazo is a Community Developer at CommonBond, a social lending platform that connects student borrowers and alumni investors to lower the cost of education for students and improve financial returns for investors. CommonBond is also the first company to bring the “one-for-one” model to education. Rex will be entering the Class of 2015 at a top business school in the fall. This is the third in a series of “I’m in… Now What?” posts for prospective and incoming MBA students.

DON’T MISS: GREAT PROBLEM TO HAVE: ‘I’M IN…NOW WHAT?’ or HOW TO PAY FOR BUSINESS SCHOL: ‘I’M IN…NOW WHAT?’