If you’re applying for an MBA, you’re bound to be brimming with questions.
How do you make the most of your MBA experience? Should you focus on extracurriculars, internships — or keep your head in the textbooks? What’s the best way to approach networking?
Without the beauty of hindsight, it can be difficult to know how to best spend your time. So why not steal the hindsight of some successful MBA alumni?
Here are five things former MBA students from the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business wish they’d known when applying for their MBAs.
1. Don’t dismiss the value of soft skills
Terry graduate Viju Krishnan, now a business valuation manager at Deloitte, advises incoming MBAs to take soft skills seriously. This includes learning how to pitch yourself or practicing mock interviews.
“I remember feeling so silly during mock interviews, but that’s the stuff that’s helpful,” Viju says. “When the next networking opportunity arises and someone asks what you do, and you have 20 seconds to answer, it’s great to have that preparation.”
At Terry College, you can brush up on these skills with workshops run by the MBA Career Management Center, which coaches you through the job application process, identifies your strengths, and helps you land relevant internships with local firms.
2. It’s OK to make mistakes on your MBA
Business school isn’t always easy, Terry MBA Sonya Penkova remembers.
Sonya applied for her MBA to become more familiar with financial concepts and advance her management skills. Building up this expertise paid off dividends in her role as product innovation manager for risk solutions company LexisNexis, where she handles complex data analysis and manages several teams day-to-day.
She emphasizes that challenging moments on your MBA are vital to helping build your resilience, and come out with a broader, more experienced view of the business world.
Learning from things going wrong is what the MBA experience is all about. “An MBA is a low cost-of-error environment,” Viju says.
Unlike at work, you can make mistakes on your MBA and nothing is going to happen, so don’t be afraid of going out of your comfort zone. Often, that’s where there is the most potential to learn, which is what you went to business school to do!
3. Always do your homework before networking
If you land an informational call or meeting with a potential connection, you need to do your research.
“One eye-opener came when I connected with a contact I found through Terry early in my first term, and he was very candid with me about not doing enough research before speaking to him,” explains Terry MBA Thomas Saunders.
Thomas focused on finance and consulting on his MBA before becoming a vice president at Harris Williams, a mergers and acquisitions company.
After this experience, Thomas prepared in-depth for future networking opportunities, researching his contacts thoroughly before meetings, and going in with direct, specific questions to make sure the time they had together was valuable on both sides.
“With this change in tactic, I saw a quick shift in receptiveness with everyone I was reaching out to,” he adds. This new approach helped him build a strong network to leverage.
READ: MBA Jobs In Atlanta: How University Of Georgia MBAs Get Hired By Top Firms
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