Why I went to business school

Starting out my blog with the most cliched question possible, eh?

2.5 years ago when I was applying to business school I had to answer this signature question: why business school? I suppose if you go any kind of professional school they’re going to ask you why you want to pursue that particular profession. Business school is slightly different because business is such a ubiquitous thing. There are so many ways of answering this question, consequently.

My approach to business school is an academic one: I went to business school to learn. Not just how to network, how to interview for jobs, but how to run a business, how to use data to make business decisions, how to get a team to work effectively together. I went to a liberal arts college, studying Mathematical Economics and Music among other things, so I didn’t have much business knowledge. My previous career trained me in a narrow field which doesn’t alleviate much of the problem.

But why business vs a specific academic discipline or profession? My reasoning was that eventually when I gained more professional experience I’d have to manage people and develop a vision, and business school is the best place to learn how to do these. Technical skills and knowledge can be self-taught, while business skills cannot really be learned from a book or a pre-recorded lecture. Furthermore, I figured that since the workload in business schools is relatively light, I could also take more technical classes at the mother university. I had a hunch that a Master’s in Statistics student would not be able to take business classes.

It took me a while to decide to go to business school, and took me a longer while to apply to business school for the 2017 intake. Looking back, I am grateful that I made these decisions, because they changed my life in a very good way. If you are curious how, stay tuned for the next posts.

-Richard