5 Ways to prepare for the first year of management school

5 Ways to prepare for the first year of management school

Having a plan is always better than having no plan at all! And therefore, in this blog post, we’ll share with you 5 quick tips to help you prepare well for your first year at your PGDM or MBA college.

  1. Work on improving your personality and communication: The top PGDM colleges in Delhi NCR offer structured personality development programmes to help their students with their low confidence and lack of public speaking skills. But you should ideally not wait for your MBA programme to start and your professors telling you to start working on yourselves. As, building communication skills and personality is surely not a day’s job. It requires persistent efforts and dedicated approach to outshine certain aspects of your personality. Whether you’re pursuing a PGDM program in marketing or finance or in some other concentration, it is important that you get into a habit of daily reading of  business dailies like The Economic Times, The Hindu, Business Line, etc. Make sure to read through the Editorial section of each of these dailies to help you develop the in-depth knowledge of the happenings of the business world.
    Be an avid reader and watch English news channels and movies to improve your diction and vocabulary. Also, try and speak with your friends and family in English as much as you can.
    Read some excellent business books like ‘Made in America’ by Sam Walton, The Halo Effect by P. Rosenzweig, The World is Flat by Thomas Freidman, etc. This will open up the horizons to your mental limits and will make you extremely open-minded and receptive.
  1. Maintain and grow your existing network: The top PGDM colleges in Delhi NCR organize all sorts of professional and social events at their campuses. Make sure you make the best use of the social events organized at your college or ice-breaking sessions to mingle with people and grow your network.Start opening up, start sharing and expressing your ideas and point of view, you need to be an extrovert and must be curious to learn new things. Having said that, there is nothing wrong in being an introvert, as eventually introverts are able to make much more meaningful long term relationships. All you need to do is to focus on building contacts and being able to stay in touch with them.
  1. Interact with the current MBA students or Alumni: This helps you to understand how demanding this programme is going to be. It also tells you the areas in which you will be primarily working upon as an MBA student.
    Most students are not able to cope-up well if they are put to grind immediately. But, if you are mentally prepared and have been working on that direction, then the transition becomes very smooth and easy.
  1. Brush up your financial concepts and quantitative skills: Whether you’re applying for a post graduate diploma in finance or banking, two things that really help you in your PGDM or MBA is your financial concepts and quantitative skills. But, once you start with your first year, there is so much happening that you are left with very little time left to brush up the concepts.Mathematics and finance concepts are required even when you are making your project reports or internship reports. These concepts are very critical in dealing with two important subjects which are ‘financial accounting’ and ‘Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis’.
  1. Work on fitness: Your fitness levels are extremely critical in helping you successfully finish the programme. Your professional career is almost there and is about to begin. With tremendous work load, stress and insecurities of all kinds, you need to learn to stay mentally and physically fit.
    If you suffer with poor health, you are often left behind even though you have the talent and skills to compete. So, you got to watch your health as health is wealth always!!So, MBA or PGDM bonding and networking goes beyond classroom relationships which eventually could mature into co-working relationships too.There is so much to learn and explore in these two critical years that you always need to be on toes to become the best versions of yourselves. Never mind, perseverance and hard work always bear fruitful results!! Just hang on!!!Wish you all the best for your professional endeavour!!!