Past The Prospectus: The MBA Doesn’t End At Graduation

When I first arrived at London Business School, two years felt like a very long time…

There were classes to take, clubs to join, sectors to explore, and countless people to meet. Graduation sat somewhere in the distance, visible enough to acknowledge but far enough away to ignore. Like many prospective students, I viewed the MBA as a two-year experience. Now, standing at the end of the programme, what surprises me most is not how quickly the time has passed, but how little this moment feels like an ending.

THE EXPERIENCES WE COME FOR

Looking back, I am struck by just how much could fit into such a short period of time. Around me, classmates have been launching companies, changing industries, moving countries and pursuing opportunities they could never have imagined before arriving at LBS. My own MBA unfolded in a different way. One month involved inviting Patrick Pichette (former Google CFO) and members of the GMR Group (owners of the Delhi Capitals IPL franchise) to campus for a conference; the other involved heading to Nepal to consult for an AI startup. Of course, there was a semester in the US sandwiched in between internships spanning VC, sports, and consumer investing.

What I found most remarkable was not any single experience, but how different everyone’s MBA became. Ask ten classmates about the highlight of their two years and you would probably hear ten completely different answers. Yet every story somehow felt equally extraordinary.

These are the experiences that attract many of us to business school in the first place, and they certainly attracted me. They are the stories that feature in prospectuses, admissions events, and conversations with alumni and they become the memories we expect to define our MBA.

Eventually, though, each one of them comes to an end. The internship finishes. The exchange ends. Someone else takes over the club committee. The conference ends almost as soon as it begins.

THE PART THAT CONTINUES

Graduation has made me realise that those experiences were never the end goal. They were the reason we all met in the first place.

Along the way, the people around those experiences quietly became just as important as the experiences themselves. The project teammate became someone whose career you genuinely wanted to see succeed. Coffee between lectures (or, more realistically, a pint…) became dinner. Evenings at the pub became nights out. Somewhere between classes, projects, and everything else that business school throws at you, classmates became close friends.

And those relationships don’t end with graduation, they simply evolve. Over the past two years, I have been fortunate enough to visit classmates in their home countries, experiencing places through the people who know them better than any guidebook ever could. Professionally, those same people have become the friends I turn to for advice, introductions, and different perspectives. Personally, they have become people I know will remain part of my life long after the MBA itself.

Perhaps that is why graduation feels different from what I expected. Most educational experiences have a clear finish line. You complete the programme, collect the qualification, and move on. Business school feels different because graduation is less of an ending than a transition.

While helping manage the LBS Founders website, I had the opportunity to write about alumni who had gone on to build remarkable companies after leaving the School. Standing at graduation, it strikes me that we are now becoming the next generation of those stories. The conversations that once revolved around ambitions and possibilities are beginning to turn into companies being built, investments being made, careers taking shape and (no doubt) plenty of unexpected detours along the way. The MBA may be over, but the community – and everyone’s individual story – feels as though it is only just beginning.

A FINAL LOOK BACK

As I leave LBS, I know I will always be grateful for the experiences that filled the past two years. They challenged me, broadened my perspective, and gave me opportunities I could never have anticipated when I first walked through the doors of the Sammy Ofer.

Yet when I think back on my MBA in years to come, I suspect it will not be a particular conference, club event, or talk that I remember first. Instead, it will be the people. The classmates who became lifelong friends. The alumni who generously opened doors. The mentors who offered advice when it was needed most. Those relationships will continue to shape both my career and my life long after the graduation gowns have been returned.

Perhaps that is the aspect of business school that is hardest to appreciate when applying. The prospectus tells you that the MBA lasts two years. What it cannot tell you is that graduation isn’t really the end of the MBA. In many ways, it is just the beginning.

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Kunaal Kankate 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.

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