Make use of the time if you want before MBA

This is for folks who have a non-engineering background—those who come from fields other than engineering or sciences, and haven't had as much exposure to mathematics as they ideally should have. Perhaps you only touched upon it while preparing for CAT, and that too, not very deeply. This is for you.

Guys, take a month or two to onboard yourself onto the journey that awaits—a beautiful one indeed. But before that, just a few things.

If you can, and if you’re good with productivity and can make use of the time at your disposal—which I’m pretty sure you have right now—go through a lot of Excel. Study Excel using YouTube, preferably in your regional language. You can, for example, use Hindi YouTube channels to learn Excel, or English ones.

Python would be very interesting—there are a lot of beginner-level courses, and then some secondary ones as well. When it comes to finance and analytics, Python is heavily used. In fact, some coding within integrated tools of Excel also requires Python or the R language. So, these two things—Python and R—can be quite useful.

Also, it would really help if you brushed up on solving equations with multiple variables—especially those that are useful in operations management. For example, in transportation problems or network diagram-based questions, these kinds of equations come up quite a lot.

I know, I know you’ll do that there too but I’ve seen cases where people have suffered. Some have made unholy alliances just for survival and I wouldn’t wish them upon you lol ;)

So what happens is—and I can only speak for the top five, top six colleges, let’s say BLACKI—the intensity of the competition actually takes a toll on you. I just want you to be prepared. Nonetheless, this kind of preparation would be useful across all MBA colleges.