The first year of b-school can be daunting for even the most well-prepared MBA student. After all, the jump into a flood of term-papers, recruiting events, group projects and other b-school occurrences is a far cry from the long days of corporate work that most students are coming from. In fact, most MBA students have a completely different university experience than they encountered as undergraduates.
Coming In
The first aspect of business programs that many are quick to notice is the difference in students' skill levels. "Because the students have such a varied background it is hard to assure that everyone understands the same information or that they are on a similar level," says Chaviva Fisher, a part-time MBA student at Baruch in New York. "Since there are no business classes required before starting the MBA program, there are students who are not familiar with any of the standard industry lingo and there are others who have been investment bankers for years."
To counteract this inequality, many schools have instituted summer programs that students can attend before the start of their first year. The aim of these programs is to ensure that all entering students will have at least a minimal amount of business skills knowledge before they start their first-year courses, no matter what their background.
"Work, Work, and More Work"
Once you've started school, there are huge differences between the kind of work most students have experienced in undergrad and your b-school experience. First of all, b-school adds a more practical bent to the methods used in undergraduate classes. "As opposed to undergrad work which is mostly papers for the sake of committing your opinions or analysis for the teacher to review," says Fisher, "each paper I've been assigned in graduate school offers practical guidance to real work situations."
Added to difference in the type of work expected from students is the amount and intensiveness of the workload as well. Andrew Ackerman, MBA from U of Chicago, says that the first year of b-school is a lot like junior year of college. "Unlike freshman and sophomore year, most people go into b-school with a good idea of where they might be going. And unlike senior year, people are still working hard."
Shlomo Babani, studying part-time for an NYU MBA, concurs. "It was strange to be back in a classroom," he says, "but the hardest part was the work, work, and more work."
The compressed programs of most b-schools promote the hardworking aspect of their students' experience. Because there are so many classes, and not enough time to take all of them, it can be hard to experiment with courses outside of your main concentration. As Ackerman says "It's easy to rule out the subjects that don't appeal, but there are always more classes you want to take than you have time."
