The importance of being practical

First of all, because I have received a lot of comments from my friends on my previous post, I would like to say that when I was writing about Enron and Mr. Vayner I by no means was supporting their actions. However, I was impressed by the fact that society very often prompts this kind of behavior and sometimes you need to be REALLY strong to resist the pressure.
Somehow I understood that my posts lack the practical information and will try to divide them into 2 parts: practical (that you probably wanna read) and personal (that you probably wanna skip if you don’t like my stile).
The practical side today is about how you can prepare better for the course, if you’re admitted already.

• As you know LBS has quite strong reputation in finance, so a lot of people select this area as their concentration. But unfortunately visualizing yourself as a financial guru is not enough. And if quantitative side is not one of your best, you need to study in advance. Finance 1 is the most dreaded exam in the first term (though 2/3 of the boys are desperately in love with our brilliant finance professor – Francesca Cornelli). Our main text book is Corporate Finance by Richard A. Brealey, Stewart C. Myers, Franklin Allen and I strongly recommend you to have at least a look prior the beginning of the studies, especially if English is not your native language and you are not familiar with basic concepts in finance.

You need to be able to manage your time and set priorities, otherwise you will be buried under endless number of home tasks and articles (that’s what happened to me - it is 12.45 a.m. and I am still half done with my homework). It may sound pretty obvious, but believe me it’s hard. Though prior my MBA I had senior managerial position and was responsible for multi-functional activities, somehow it doesn’t work here.

You need to do at least preliminary research about industry you wanna walk in after the school. Opportunities and consequently number of activities associated with them are almost endless here, but as it’s mentioned in the second bullet – you only have 24 hours per day. Milk round (i.e job hunting season) starts in January and it is only 4 months since you began your studies. And if in previous life you are sometimes used to calm yourself with the fact that you are one of the brightest people to select from, here it will not work – you will compete with the very talented and diverse students. So, try to select max. 2 major areas you are interested in. The useful resources are: Vault and Wetfeet , which both have excellent industry guides as well as interview guides for consulting and finance. The book What Color Is Your Parachute?: A Practical Guide for Job-Hunters and Career Changers will help you to have systematic approach to your job hunt, it will also help you not to lose the sense of humor.

And finally, as you probably know investment banking and consulting are differentiated from other industries not only by the nature of the job but also by a very specific interview process. So, if your interests lay in one of those fields a little preparation will not harmJ. The book Case in Point: Complete Case Interview Preparation will give your good understanding about case interview process for consulting and the book Heard on the Street: Quantitative Questions from Wall Street Job Interviewswill familiarize you with the problems you might expect to encounter at the banking interview.

No personal part today - I'm half asleep already, so sweat dreams boys and girls.