[讨论] Top 10 Things to Do Before B-school

normandy

同感同感，不过我在加拿大，想的是从温哥华到哈利法克斯的穿洲旅行。

wwwzzz

以下是引用david02在2005-1-21 0:04:00的发言：

Valuable advice. However any good advice on how to improve fast read?  Even for GMAT, I find it hard to skip anything! Any good books on this topic to recommend?

Excel skills are also very important to save a lot of sleep at B-school. (Heard from a MBA graduate.)

Everyone has his/her own reading habits, so there might never be any universally applicable speed-reading skills. Indeed there are books on this topic, but my guess is that forcing yourself to take on someone else's habits is much more difficult than improving on your own.

A foundamental mentality change is knowing why you read--it is not to "study the language" but to ENJOY the content, in other words, we no longer read to pass tests, we do it for our own sake. Sadly, our intensive reading training in middle school or college have long deprived us of the enjoyment...In fact the less focused you are on the language itself, the more you can get out of the reading (this may seem self-contradictory, but has been proven true). In the end it will become so natural that you may even forget that it's not in your native language. (That's still my dream, so don't ask me how long it will take, hehe.) This also applies to speaking and writing.

Bearing the above in mind, I would say day-to-day extensive reading ("extensive" as in diversity of topics, lengths and styles, based on your own interest) may be a good way to practice. You don't have to choose some masterpiece and force yourself to read 50 pages before going to bed. That will only give you a faster and sounder sleep. Just replace what you would normally read in Chinese with their English versions, e.g.  read the National Enquirer instead of Sina's celebrity gossip ("bagua xinwen"), hehe.

As for the comment on Excel skills, I can't agree more. A little more knowledge on designing  fancy PowerPoints may also come in handy. Actually according a few second years, these are the two single most important things they learned during their 10-week summer intern...;)

[此贴子已经被作者于2005-1-22 14:31:07编辑过]

ruiyu25

wow, what valuable advices! thanks so much, wwwzzz MM!

david02

wwwzzz,

Cann't agree with you more! Many thanks for sharing your insights.

wwwzzz

One additional point: if you have a less than stellar GMAT, retake it to get at least 700+ (750+ helps greatly), especially if

1) Consulting is one of your future career choices. Companies shortlist candidates largely by their GMAT scores)

2) You don't have a background in top consulting/i-banking firms, or a Ph.D in Physics from a top school... in other words, something to show that you have exceptional intellectual power...

[此贴子已经被作者于2005-2-1 1:04:44编辑过]

mumuwa

MANY THANKS INDEED!