10 people and places you must visit before you join B-school

Contributing Blogger Deb Panda throws light on people and places that can make life simple for students joining B-school. Do you know them?  

By Deb Panda

Unlike a 2 year pgdm/pgp program, time is of the essence in a one year MBA program. There are certain virtual people and places that can help jumpstart your journey and beat the time Crunch. Do you know them?

Café Facebook 

This is the place you’ll meet new faces, gel with old ones and exchange news and views with each other. The place for HOTO! – while in a one year MBA, you do not get a chance to meet your seniors, Cafe Facebook ensures a seamless HOTO (Hand over/ Take over). Breaking news to family, friends, and office folk – One whisper at Cafe Facebook and you can rest assured that it has reached everybody and his cousin. In this café, a lot happens over coffee.

Ms. Watsapp

She knows anybody, everybody and everything. If you are in trouble and need an immediate answer, ping her. She will come handy when you get doubts about education loans or need to plan travel and connect with seniors in your town. Through her you will get instant updates while at office, home and even when you are sleeping. She may overwhelm you at times but you ought to know her as she is going to be your BFF especially during you ‘waitlisted’ days.

MS. Office

She is the guardian of the three most important acquaintances you would ever make in your life:

Ms. Word

Do not get misled by her simple white attire for she is a monolith. She is the most talkative, verbose person you would ever meet. She is going to be your companion in solving case studies and projects. Better get acquainted at the earliest.

Ms. PPT

She may appear petite but  she is truly power personified. She is going to be by your side in the classroom for every presentation.

Ms.Excel

Some find her too quantitative in her approach and lacking the wordplay of Ms. Word but if you want to become a corporate honcho, learn the magic of this Merlin. Her magical formulas include graphs, pivots, and the all powerful ‘if function’. One early use of his enigma is to tabulate the Batch analytics – profile, years of experience, functional profile etc.

Mr. Google                      

Knowledge is power and Mr. Google grants you access to all the knowledge you will ever need. He can lure you in to a never ending vortex of millions of answers to any question you could ever ask. Your expertise in filtering the relevant information in this maze of will separate you from your peers.

Oneyearmba.co.in tip: Learn the hidden ways of Google before you hit B-school: tricks such as using search words with quote marks to find the exact phrase you are looking for and appending a search query with filetype:ppt or filetype:pdf to find specific types of documents are critical in finding relevant information while researching for projects. More on this here: The complete list of Google Search Tips and Tricks

Mr. Google Mail

It is sacrosanct to maintain a courteous relationship with the friendly neighborhood postman – more so with Mr. Google mail or you might see your acceptance mail going to spam! 🙂 He is going to be the first one to break to you the good news of Group discussion and Personal interview invites and the first one to inform you of the status of your admission. Also invaluable for cracking a deal for your education loan.

Sir Google Drive                             

A known accomplice of Mr. Google. Knowledge is power and countries, corporates and individuals have risen and fallen based on their access to the right information. If you want to wield the power of knowledge, please touch base with Sir Google Drive. He can teach you how to widen your horizons of knowledge, by proper archiving, group sharing and group learning.

Great place to share notes on the programme and planning the year ahead with your fellow students.

Skype Tours & Travels

This magical portal can apparate you anywhere at any time. Most handy for:

• Appearing for a college interview despite sitting in a different continent 
• Connecting with peers, face to face in real time
• Doubt clarification and hangouts with college seniors

My advice to everyone is that the sooner you get acquainted with the personalities listed above, the smoother your journey to B-school and within the B-school is going to be.

Contributing Blogger Deb Panda is an MBA (PGDM-GM) 2015 candidate at XLRI, Jamshedpur. He has close to 6 years of work experience in Business Strategy & Product Management in the e-commerce domain working with Tata Consultancy Service (TCS). He has successfully rolled out eCommerce sites like titan.co.in and he has world-wide patents under his belt in the eCommerce domain.  Besides being a sports enthusiast, he likes discovering unique youtube videos and cartoons like Naruto. He aims to leverage the power of Business Analytics and become a leading strategist. If he is not fretting in the gym, you can reach him at [email protected] 

Image courtesy yemista.com