Bschool – The Rat Race

The reasons as to why one decides to pursue an MBA vary from person to person. However, that being said there is wide consensus among the vast majority of aspirants that the School one gets admitted into should be a good, if not great. I am not going to talk about the B school selection strategy one should follow. Instead what I am going to talk about is the belief system one should carry while at the program.

If you have been accepted by a school of your choosing then the first thing that you should do is to take a bow! You have outperformed several other aspirants vying for a coveted seat in the school; and that is no mean feat. However, that being said, whether you realize or not you have been pulled in to the proverbial rat race. It is up to you to decide whether you get overwhelmed by it, ignore it or take it by the scruff of the neck. Make no mistake about it, healthy competition is good; however, the need to outperform cannot and should not be your modus operandi at the program.

At a good school, chances are that you will be surrounded by the best minds in the country; and being hard on yourself for every so called failure is perhaps the worst mistake you can make. It might sound clichéd, but your competition should only be with that passionate version of you who walked in to the campus with eyes gleaming at the endless possibilities in store. The rigors of the academic program will try to break you and you will need every ounce of strength to stay true to you aspirations and goals.

The pertinent fact you need to understand is that your peers at the school aren’t competition; instead, they are your best source of learning. Each of your peers has been meticulously selected not only because of the dollars they have saved their organizations or the initiatives they have led but also because of their potential to contribute to the program. So you need to make sure that you don’t lose out on this unprecedented opportunity.

Grades matter, of course they do. But there is so much more to B school life than just grades or seven figure salaries.