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A day in the life of a SOIL student

16 Nov 2021
- admin
What is a typical day like for an MBA student? I’m sure many of you have heard just how busy business school students are. Since so many future business students want to know what to expect, I have tried to provide a typical intro to my life as a student of the one-year PGPM program at SOIL Institute of Management. Of course, your experience will differ based on your background, work-ex, the courses you take, your specialization, your interests and day-to-day changes, but this will give you a general idea as to the classes, activities, and workload we have and how we go through it all to develop our personal and professional caliber.

Monday, 8 AM: I leave my apartment, ready for day long classes at the SOIL Campus, 3 miles away from where I reside. On my way, I mentally review my class schedule for the day.

“The Morning circle”, (MC), as we call our morning Assembly consisting of students and faculty, commences at 8.40 AM sharp, and goes on for 20 minutes until 9.10 AM.

9:30 – 10:45 AM: Foundations of Strategy commences with group presentations. My group is ready with our analysis, our slide deck, and will be presenting on the case study assigned to us. Our associate Dean and faculty for this course, Prof. Jaswal, listens intently to our 7-minute presentation, closing with questions and suggestions that we take note of. I then take a breather sipping tea, listening to other teams present their case analysis.

I definitely have a full day ahead of me, but I usually enjoy my daily schedules. It interests me and I always look forward to the classes and activities. It is the full B-School experience.

11:15 – 12:45 AM: My next class—Self Leadership—starts with a discussion of the dynamics of running a team. Sh. Anil Sachdev, the founder of SOIL happens to preside over this course for us, has made it amply clear, that the class is based on participation, as he stresses on open discussion of personal experiences. The course is one of the “soft subjects”—managing oneself & people—and introduces ideas that are foreign to my finance background. By the end of the class, we all feel confident with our ability to construct teams for different purposes—a key skill we’ll need once we graduate and take the reins of corporate teams.

Lunch: A quick lunch after that in our lovely bright cafeteria where we all meet over food and banter – A true B-School tradition.

1:30 – 2:45 PM: Corporate Finance is one subject where everyone is at their attentive best, courtesy, our highly dynamic Dean, Dr. Neetika Batra, teaches us this course touching upon practical skills for business planning. We work numbers on our respective excel sheets simultaneously as she demonstrates. Most of us find this course intriguing because it explains how the world works and why companies make the decisions they do. Every session is a cathartic experience. If you think you know corporate finance in and out, think again.

Special mention to the piping hot tea served in the afternoons by college staff, that keeps us refreshed for the day ahead.

3:15 – 4:30 PM: Next up, Marketing- my core course and one of my favorites owing to the jolly nature of the faculty – Prof. A.N. Bhattacharya, and the interesting case studies discussed in each lecture. This class is usually a highly interactive and discussion-based session, mostly involving case studies laden with interesting facts from the Marketing world. Prof. ANB keeps us students engaged with very interesting questions:

“Amrita, what was the hotel market like in the 80’s in India? What can we learn from that?”

“Saurabh, who are Marriott’s competitors in the area? How would you do a SWOT for them?”

“Sneha, how would increase the hotel’s revenue and profitability?”

During the short breaks in- between classes, we have our group discussion sessions scheduled with our respective groups for the upcoming assignments and group presentations.

5:00 – 7:00 PM: Then I’m off to hear industry experts from the Banking industry share their expertise and interact with us as part of the ongoing Banking Week organized by our institute. We spend engaging hours with the speakers as they share industry trends, latest happenings in their fields and help us understand the practical nature of what we’re learning in class. Much to our delight, they usually spend a lot of time taking our questions.

10 PM: It finally is sleep time for me. Despite my crazy day, it isn’t all work all the time! Sometimes, I head out to the famous Galleria Market close to my residence, with my fellow batch mates for a refreshing Cold Coffee. If I’m not wiped out at the end of the day, I’ll spend a few hours hitting the books for assignments due that week or writing an article or two as part of the Research Assistantship (RA) work I am allocated, as part of my curriculum.

Amrita Ravichandran
PGPM (Class of 2022)