Summer Before Business School: When and How to Quit Your Job? Then What?
What Do Schools Recommend the Summer Before Business School?
Are the various approaches these students have taken in line with what business schools think will best prepare them for the demands of the MBA? Largely, yes.
Stacey Rudnick, who heads career services for UT Austin’s McCombs School of Business, notes that letting your employers know well in advance that you’ll be leaving can actually offer other advantages. “What a perfect opportunity this presents to start talking to people at your current company about your future goals,” she says. “Go to your company’s marketing department and explain that you are headed off to business school and really interested in a career in marketing. Utilize the resources at your disposal to learn as much as you can about your future career path.”
She also urges prospective students to read the business press. “When you start an MBA program, you are going to go from reading a lot of email, which is very short, to reading long cases for class,” she says. “Reading the business press will help you get your business vocabulary back up if it is not already sharp and will be important in preparing you to digest huge amounts of information in a really short period of time.”
Luke Kreinberg, associate director of the Haas Career Management Group, stresses the importance of a clean exit. “Make sure that you have a clean closure at your place of employment and leave on a good note if at all possible,” he says. Not only does it maintain valuable relationships down the line, he finds that the person leaving the job is better off when he or she leaves things at a good handing-off point. “It really shifts how someone approaches the next challenge, whatever that is,” he says.
Rudnick reminds incoming students that the first semester of any MBA program is very academically challenging—and this is especially true if you don’t come from a strong math, accounting or statistics background. “If you are coming from a liberal arts educational background there is a lot that can be hard to digest, so anything you can do to better prepare yourself before you hit the first semester is a good idea,” she says.
But she’s also a big proponent of taking a break between work and school. “Give yourself some time to recharge, to get acclimated to the city before orientation or just to relax, because things are going to get very intense very quickly.”
What Approach Are This Year’s Admits Taking?
Though some are still in the throes of making precisely these decisions, we know from exchanges on Reddit what a handful of next year’s first-year MBA students are planning to do with the time before they start.
Several are set to travel—with Asia a popular destination. (Our sources tell us that Gaggan, recently voted best restaurant in Asia, is not to be missed if you make it to Bangkok.) Others report that they’ll do a mix of travel, some with friends and some with family, to places in Europe and/or various parts of the United States. At least one is planning an extended road trip across the U.S. to arrive in time for school to start.
The theme of needing to balance between taking off to travel and staying at work in order to save up as much as possible for school was also echoed in the Reddit threads. “I’m staying all the way till the end of July,” wrote one, adding that he or she will then have a two-week vacation followed by a two-week staycation before schools starts. “I am really jealous of all you people doing large backpacking trips, I just don’t feel comfortable doing it monetarily,” the poster added.
“No crazy trips for me as well; I figure I’ll save it for the in-school experience,” wrote another. Another, with plans to quit at the end of May, has begun to question extensive travel plans and may scale back a scheduled Europe trip by a week or so. “I’m actually worried that I’m travelling too much this summer and won’t be sufficiently rested.”
Another is planning to save traveling for once school starts, beginning with a pre-term trip with other MBAs. “I figure there will be ample opportunities to travel during the program,” the poster wrote. ”I also want to keep collecting pay checks since I didn’t get a scholarship so I’ll probably keep working until August.”
Another poster shared plans to keep working through the end of June, both to save money and help out his or her employer. “Besides the financial aspect, my work is going through a transition period with a lot of new people hired over the last few months so I wanted to stay as long as possible to ease in the new manager, etc.”
Oh, I’m Just Going to Squeeze in a Wedding
For two of the people we talked to, major life events also factored into the summer before business school. Haas second-year MBA student Sneha Sheth quit her consulting job at Dalberg Global Development Advisors at the beginning of July, giving herself just under two months to plan and shop for her wedding, travel and move. “It was a really interesting time in my life,” she recalls with a laugh.
Sheth’s path to business school sounds strikingly similar to Natalie Neilson’s plans. Neilson is headed to Wharton from her current consulting role at Deloitte. “I’m quitting in mid-July, getting married the week after, then starting school the week after that!” she says.
No Single Path to Business School
In summary, it seems like there’s no one “right” way to spend that summer before business school. That said, key tidbits of prevailing wisdom emerged from our many conversations with current and future students, as well as representatives from the schools themselves.
Our takeaways: Travel if you can, but remember to balance your need for adventure with your need for money for the two years ahead. Brush up on your math skills—especially if you’re several years out of school and/or from a liberal arts background—and familiarize yourself with the business press. Give your employer as much notice as possible, not only to maintain good relationships when you leave but also to network within your company and learn more about potential post-MBA career paths.
Finally, more than anything else, the message current students shared with us was that they wished they’d given themselves more time than they did—whether to travel, to squeeze in a wedding, to catch up on reading or to catch up on sleep. Because by all accounts, when you get to school it’s like drinking from a fire hose the moment you set foot on campus.
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