mbahut – A London Business School blog

Our second year project is done – all 15k words of it. It’s one of those tasks that takes up a good deal of mental space, causes a small amount of worry but ultimately turns out just fine. Once you get your head down and come up with a plan, things get moving. And more [...]

Psychologists and economists have lots to say about our tendency to become accustomed to situations. However shiny and exciting the end goal, once achieved, it quickly becomes the norm. It’s great to have achieved this thing or bought that thing, but that initial sense of excitement or anticipation decreases in intensity. We’re then on to [...]

Earlier is better. It’s understandable if you don’t know exactly what you’ll be doing in a year or two. But even if you’re only half-considering more study, you can take steps to make life easier for yourself and create genuine options later down the line. Cash: The ‘Finances’ page of most school websites doesn’t make [...]

This year, I’ve popped into quite a few art exhibitions in London. After spending most of the week in the structured world of frameworks and spreadsheets, it’s interesting to be in an environment that is in some sense the opposite. As far as I know, there’s no formula or rule dictating the position of brush [...]

One of the professed advantages of LBS is the international student body. Schools shout from the rooftops about the number of nationalities represented But does this really matter? Is a school with 60 different nationalities better for you than one with 30? I think diversity matters and that it makes the student experience better. But [...]

I’ve spent a good part of the course working part time; about nine months in total. The school doesn’t recommend it, but many people manage to fit it in. I’ve enjoyed it, and would happily make the same choice again. But there are a few things to consider. Namely, opportunity costs. You’re paying a significant [...]

Sitting in a folder on my laptop are various application essays. Those essays took many hours of writing, editing, deleting, re-writing, etc. Not to mention time spent on them by the kind people who reviewed them prior to submission. For something that absorbed so much effort, the lack of attention I’ve given to those essays [...]

In the last post, I wrote a little about what I’ve learned about the networking and relationship-building process over the course of the MBA studies. That post focused on careers. This post is about building a networks and relationships from the perspective of someone working in finance. To anyone already working in the sector, the [...]

A good chunk of the year has been spent collecting business cards. Far from being a strange hobby, it’s an inevitable consequence of day to day life on campus. Between interviews, presentations, meetings, etc. a pile of cards grows imperceptibly over time. Now that pile shouldn’t be confused with the number of people you actually [...]

Last post, I mentioned this sense among some, that we already know all the answers when it comes to course rankings. A good example of this is a recent post on Poets and Quants, addressing reported alumni salaries. Financial Times (FT) data tends to deflate reported salaries in the US, and inflate those in certain [...]