After applying to eight universities for an MBA course, I finally decided to pursue it at Raymond A. Mason School of Business: The College of William and Mary, Virginia. It has a good reputation and is well known for paying individual attention to managerial skill and personal development. I also received a scholarship.
There is a lot of greenery in this quaint town of Williamsburg. We had various outdoor team exercises, including a rope course and crossing a river, which were a good ice-breaker.
The programme offers a management communication class to help international students improve their public speaking skills, writing ability and confidence levels. The last module in the first year was relatively free to give students more time to work on a suitable internship programme.
There are two fantastic groups at Mason. The first is the Graduate Career Management Center, a group completely dedicated to helping students develop themselves, practise cases, build connections in the professional world, find an internship and land a job. This group was involved with me from day one and helped me build my resume, polish my cover letter and apply for internships. The amount of individual attention the staff provide to the students is phenomenal.
The second is the Executive Partner (EP) group. This is a group of more than 100 senior business executives from more than 20 different industries available to support any student willing to reach out to them. They are a great resource of experience and feedback.
I was pleasantly surprised when one of the executive partners I had been talking to offered to take me to different retail outlets and discuss their marketing strategies.
The second year is a mix of self-development and honing our chosen specialisation. I got the opportunity to work with people from the U.S. and Asia. Interactions with such a diverse set of intellectuals has helped me gain interesting insights.
At Mason, we are trained to make well-informed, thoroughly researched decisions and stand by them. The tagline of our MBA programme sums it up perfectly: “Own It”.
The writer is pursuing MBA at Raymond A. Mason School of Business: The College of William and Mary, Virginia.
