The Biggest Surprises Awaiting You At Business School

Allison Campbell

MODELS AND BALANCE SHEETS? NAH, THINK SOFT SKILLS AND INTROSPECTION

This dynamic adds a counterintuitive wrinkle to the mix, according to UCLA’s Maeghan Rouch, who returned to Bain & Company after graduation. Her big epiphany: Grades don’t matter like they did when you were an undergrad. “As a Type-A student,” she confesses, “I always cared about grades … but my time in business school wasn’t about getting A’s.” Instead, she says, it’s a time to learn for real. “I’ve approached all of my classes with the mindset of gleaning all I can to get what I need to be successful in business and in life, and not to game the syllabus and get an A. It was a bit challenging for my Type-A self at first, but ultimately became a very freeing and empowering way to approach business school.”

Along with grades being played down, some Best & Brightest graduates say they were caught off-guard by the emphasis on soft skills — described as the “fluffy stuff” by Tarana Shivdasani, a Goldman Sachs veteran who headed up “social affairs” at the London Business School. But don’t assume it was just quants who struggled to master those elusive people skills. Washington University’s Allison Campbell is a classic poet who majored in history and Spanish as an undergrad and worked in hospitality before going for an MBA. Over time, she quickly recognized how important soft skills were to getting things done. “I started out my MBA experience fulfilling all the core, technical classes. As I progressed, I have learned the organizational behavior classes provide significant value as well. When I worked on consulting projects and my internship, I reverted to examples from these behavioral classes to navigate the politics.”

In fact, some grads described their MBA experience as a solitary exercise, where the real goal was to better understand themselves so they could better grasp a clearer framework for making decisions. “I have been definitely taken aback by the amount of introspection and retrospection involved in the program,” confesses the University of Cambridge’s Sean Heisler, a project manager. “Business skills are surely evident in the coursework, but so much of the learning is centered in reflection, something I’d often forgotten to make time for in my work years prior to Cambridge. That won’t be a mistake I make again, given the sheer value that it’s given me!”

CHANGE CAN BE A HUMBLING EXPERIENCE

Although B-school clearly has a learning curve (particularly in the core Finance course), it also spurs a startling growth spurt. That was the transformation Kyle Wehr went through during his first semester at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business. “Everyone is coming in with different backgrounds and experiences and the program needs to elevate all of them to the same foundational level. The growth is incredible. I felt it in myself and in my classmates as we moved through the core courses.”

Dipika Sawhney

One particular area where first-years evolve is in how they think. Indiana’s H. Kyle Hebenstreit, who previously worked in motion picture development and distribution, had relied heavily on creativity over structure. Over two years, his problem-solving approach has completely changed, laying the groundwork for his transition to working as a consultant for Deloitte. “I was amazed at how quickly the curriculum allowed me to shift my thinking to support a more ordered and evidence-driven style of thinking,” Hebenstreit acknowledges. “It was what I was yearning for coming back to school.”

The process could be humbling at times, asserts Purdue’s Adam Ruri. For him, growth involved recognizing where he needed to improve — and taking action. “The most surprising thing for me, especially as a salesperson, was my inability to effectively sell myself. I had never experienced as much rejection as I did when I first started applying for positions. However, once I realized what I was doing wrong, I had much more success.”

For the University of Cambridge’s Dipika Sawhney, transformation was the natural outgrowth of a B-school curriculum that leans heavily on collaboration and reflection. While many students enter MBA programs with an end in mind, the journey will invariably take many on a far different path — one they should embrace. “Be prepared for the unexpected,” she counsels. “Most of my classmates are going to change their current job function, industry, and/or country. With business ideas flying, a lot of entrepreneurs are going to be created, too. The time to reflect, learn, and grow means people and their priorities often change.”