Past The Prospectus: The Value That Comes From A Breadth Of Experiences

If you’ve ever been to, or even looked into, business school, you’ve probably heard the words ‘global’ and ‘diverse’ more times than you can count. Most MBA programmes proudly highlight the number of nationalities in each cohort, but numbers alone don’t capture the true value of the words. From what I’ve experienced so far, diversity shows up in multiple ways – through culture, academia, profession and experience – and each brings its own unique kind of learning.

CULTURAL DIVERSITY

Cultural diversity is often the first type that comes to mind when thought of in the context of an MBA. It’s one thing to have classmates from different countries in the same room, but quite another to actually engage with those perspectives.

At London Business School, this comes through most clearly in study groups, the small teams you work with across core courses. My group includes classmates from Colombia, Lebanon, India and Japan, and working together has shown how culture has shaped our collaboration. Some of us prefer open debate, others value consensus; some jump straight into solutions, while others take time to build alignment first. Over time, I’ve learned that there’s no single ‘right’ approach – the best ideas often come from balancing those instincts.

ACADEMIC DIVERSITY

Upon starting the MBA, a majority of us expected a lot of the overall learning to come from traditional core classes in accounting, strategy and finance. And yes, they certainly provided a strong foundation, and I was able to deepen skills in the areas I wanted to build on. Yet, since then, some of the most unexpected learnings have come off the well-trodden path of traditional classes and from stepping into subjects I had never imagined taking.

In Digital Marketing, I learned to see success through metrics, where testing, feedback and data guide every decision. Art Business, on the other hand, revealed a world where value is shaped by story, perception and cultural meaning rather than measurement alone. Each on its own is valuable, but viewed together they open up a new perspective on how scenarios can be approached.

Meanwhile, a Global Financial Crisis deep-dive class not only revealed far more about the causes of that pivotal period, but also showed how studying a single topic in depth brings clarity, helping to connect past events to the decisions shaping today and tomorrow. And all this time I thought Selena Gomez, Anthony Bourdain and Margot Robbie had explained it all…

Overall, these experiences reminded me that while it is important to deepen technical expertise where you choose, there is huge additional value in exploring a variety of courses, because that is often where the most surprising insights emerge.

PROFESSIONAL DIVERSITY

Everyone arrives to business school with instincts shaped by past roles. Mine were built in consulting, where structured thinking, speed, and efficiency tend to guide decisions. However, working with classmates whose habits were formed in very different professional environments steadily pushed against those defaults and added new dimensions to my way of working.

For example, collaborating with someone from the creative industries revealed the benefit in letting ideas evolve before structuring them, showing that creativity often comes from giving thoughts time to form rather than rushing to organise them. That openness felt very different when working with a founder, where conviction and momentum carried equal weight to analysis. Later, a classmate from a non-profit background brought a broader perspective on what constitutes a ‘good’ outcome. This highlighted the importance of considering not only efficiency, but also who benefits and how decisions shape communities over time.

These moments did not arrive as neatly defined lessons but accumulated gradually, quietly altering how problems can be approached.

EXPERIENTIAL DIVERSITY

If cultural, professional and academic diversity shape how you think, experiential diversity is what allows you to put that into action.

Leadership roles in clubs and student-driven initiatives are a great way of doing so as I’ve found through my experience on the Entrepreneurship Club’s alumni team. Our aim is to strengthen engagement between alumni founders and current students. While we’ve begun hosting events and sharing stories, most of the learning has come from figuring out how to make that happen – trying different approaches and adjusting along the way. It feels much closer to building something real than working through an exercise in class.

LOOKING BEYOND THE NUMBERS

Overall, for anyone considering an MBA, I would advise to look beyond the headline figures and ask the questions that go beneath the surface:

• How deliberately are teams composed to encourage genuine cultural exchange?
  • How wide is the range of professional backgrounds, and how are they woven into everyday work?
  • How easy is it to explore courses outside the core curriculum?

In the end, the real value of an MBA lies in what happens through those interactions – in the collaborations and shared experiences that shape how you think. And if you embrace that mix, you’ll not only hopefully learn a lot more, but also end up with new friends, new travel and restaurant recommendations, and the quiet satisfaction of knowing that there are Arsenal fans in every corner of the world too.

Kunaal is an MBA 2026 at London Business School and also a graduate of the London School of Economics. Before his MBA, he spent five years in management consulting, advising on strategy and operations across multiple sectors. He has also co-founded a healthcare startup and been actively involved in angel investing. Passionate about the intersection of business and technology, he enjoys exploring how innovation drives meaningful change. He is also deeply interested in sports and plays and follows a variety! You can reach out to him about any of the above via his LinkedIn profile.

DON’T MISS: PAST THE PROSPECTUS: LEARNING TO PRIORITIZE AS A FIRST YEAR MBA STUDENT

© Copyright 2026 Poets & Quants. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Poets & Quants, please submit your request HERE.