Even In The Most Important Week of Your Life - Never Lose Perspective in MBA Competition

Please forgive me as I take a small tangent from the regular topics I usually cover. To my friends in New York from the summer who know me well, this will be a familiar theme.

This week is the most important week of my life. As Prof. Walid Hejazi was so elequent to describe in his session entitled: The ROI on your MBA investment. He talked about how your trajectory in life and what stream you find yourself on in terms of career paths is the primary determinent on your success in life (success deliberatetly defined in the traditional sense of your professional development).

While this session was several months ago, I'm guessing that it was intended to "assist" the students who were still debating if they should do the MBA at Rotman, I still remember some of his key take aways:

- An MBA is a great equalizer, especially for those of us who aren't the "traditional stereotype" of executive management (the "white male 42-longs" - a reference to suit size).

- It signals to the market that we are looking for more challenges by taking the initative to complete a challenging and competitive program.

Having said all that, this brings me to the coming week. As Prof. Hejazi has stated, the MBA is probably an inflection point for all our respective careers. And the grades we get in the coming week based on our exam performance will help determine where we end up with summer internships which will in turn determine where we end up with full-time jobs (granted, I've been told repeatedly that there are still "opportunities to change your trajectory" in second year, you can put yourself on "the right track" if you can put yourself together now.)

So we (my fellow students and I) are not naive about the importance of grades especially since Q1 and Q2 are what determines how we are perceived by the market for summer internships. Everyone wants to do well, and this has led to some competitive behaviour. And if there's one thing we've learned (especially with the "flexible" grading in some of our classes, which shall remain unnamed) it is that EVERYTHING IS RELATIVE. What does that mean?

Unlike undergrad, where a good raw percentage grade is all you needed to succeed: In graduate studies (or particularly in the MBA), it's all about PERCENTILES rather than PERCENTAGES. It doesn't matter that your score is 90/100. It matters that your score is in the top 90 percentile (that you beat 90% of your classmates). The work is difficult and intellectually challenging. And your classmates are BRILLIANT too. There is a very good chance they will score high also. The prestige of the Rotman brand coupled with the effectiveness of the Rotman recruitment machine will ensure this. I imagine this is true of any top tier MBA program.

This has lead to some interesting behaviour. In reading my blog, many people have asked me for help on particular topics which I am more than happy to give (more on this later). But one thing I've noticed is that EVERYTHING here is competitive (there are even lines for the men's washroom between classes).

I think that the healthy competition keeps us sharp. But there are a *small* group of people (and this is where my closest NYC friends will probably nod their heads in agreement) where some people have lost perspective when it comes to competition.

Yes, our grades are important. Yes, our grades are relative. By rational economic theory, there is no benefit (in fact there is a HUGE cost) for skewing the curve to bias the grades up by helping "weaker" students.

But there is a *small* group of people who unconciously (involuntarily, reflexively... You get the idea) frown when they walk by and see me helping out other students. I can understand their logic. By helping the weaker students out, I'm making it more difficult to get that "A+" by boosting the curve.

I once put as my status update on Twitter and Facebook: "If you have become so competitive that you can't help a colleague out, you are lost". We've often been told that having grades is important. But having grades is of no value if no one can work with you.

Never lose perspective. Grades are important as a proxy for performance. But never forget the reasons for why we strive to achieve more. If you are the type of person who has to build a "economically rational model" to describe the motivation to help your peers, then understand that performance is a poor proxy for usefulness and there are more valuable skills than simply being "brilliant". No one works in isolation. And the network we build here at Rotman is arguably much more important that that B+ we are trying to turn into an A.

Everyone here is going to be successful. And as I wrote in one of my recent applications to yet another competitive Rotman opportunity: I modeled myself against [a recent Rotman alum who is wildly successful] who "when you hear his peers speak about him they have a high respect for him not only because of his individual success but also because he played a role in their success."

... Having said that I will be focusing on my studies as exams are coming up and occupying my thoughts for all of next week.