Well, there is no right or wrong answer to these questions and nobody can answer them for you. But what you may find helpful is what our batch did last year when we got that email to join the Oxford MBA. I have compiled a couple of responses from my class mates that I will list in the rest of this blog.

One of us who didn’t bring her spouse says that it was a sound decision. ‘Getting an MBA degree has some serious financial consequences. It helps tremendously having a partner working in a stable job to support you. Also, not bringing your significant others to Oxford means more time to mingle with the rest of the cohort; half the value of the degree is in the network you build here.’

Another one who did bring her other half to Oxford says ‘Bring them and make sure they make most of their time while they are here – children, work, volunteering, study, anything. The biggest challenge with partners and the MBA is balancing time.’ There is a lot to do in Oxford not only for you but for your partner too. A friend who came with her partner is volunteering for an NGO and absolutely loving it. Another one decided to work for a local newspaper to fill her time. One decided to pursue her own studies and is now working towards a degree in Business Psychology in London. There are trains running between London and Oxford every half an hour and the journey time is approximately one hour. The cost of commute can be brought down if you book online in advance.

If he or she has a stable job in your home country, the career implications can be tremendous. If you decide not to bring them with you then it might be a good idea to pre-decide on how and when you will talk to each other. One friend said ‘Talk to them a lot when you’re here. Get phone plans that give you cheap international calling credit. Use Skype. Pre-decide convenient times for both when you would speak to each other and meet the commitment. Involve them in what you’re doing; be involved in what they’re doing. Share your days, share your experiences.’

A friend and a fellow blogger Rick Lockton who decided to bring his wife, daughter and dog to Oxford says:

‘Living close to campus would be very helpful; I would have loved to go home for lunch with my girls but couldn’t do so because I lived 30 minutes from the School. Getting a list of all spouses/kids during induction week was really helpful; most people had small groups of friends formed within the first two weeks. (…) Spouses can nearly go to almost every speaker/event/class. I would recommend spouses soak up as much of Oxford as they can while they’re here. Don’t worry about not seeing each other much… there is plenty of time for dates/traveling/going out, it’s all about prioritizing.’

I hope you are not more confused after reading this blog then you were before it The idea is to give you a better picture of what life could be when you bring your significant others to School. Ata, another friend says that one of the reasons he preferred to apply to Said was that it was quite proactive in explaining things of concern for the partners. My personal two cents on the subject: Getting an MBA is an exercise in managing your time and balancing your career goals with your personal ones. There is no way I could have done this course without having my partner’s support. So distance or no distance, most important thing is being emotionally close while you are having the most rocking year of your life!

Me: ‘Tell me a bit about yourself. The first time I realised there was two of you was in our Micro class when I saw two voices with the same face coming from different ends of the lecture theatre.’

Tyler: ‘Well, despite being identical twins we feel like we are actually quite different. When we see each other, we see different people. Interestingly, Cameron is left-handed and I am right-handed.  People say, and we agree, that our personalities show uniqueness reflective of our different handedness.

Me: ‘I have noticed you wear identical clothes. Why is that? Do you enjoy the fact that it adds to the confusion.’

Tyler: (smiling): ‘Not exactly identical, but yes, we do happen to like a lot of the same things.  In our busy schedules we usually don’t have much time to do more than grab the easiest thing, which often tends to be less distinct. 

Me: ’Do you ever fight?’

Tyler:’ See that’s the thing about twins. We can’t be mad at each other for more than fifteen minutes.’

Cameron: ‘Absolutely.’

Me: ‘Tell me something about rowing. How did you end up choosing it as a sport’

Cameron: ‘We started when we were around 15. The initial thought came from our dad who was active in endurance sports himself.  He along with other people encouraged us to try rowing because we had the rowing body-type.   We also had a neighbour who was also tall and had had a lot of successes with the sport, so we decided to try it.  We were lucky enough to meet an Irish coach named James Mangan who coached us throughout high school.  Much of where we are today as athletes is due to working with James as youths. If we hadn’t met James, there is a very good chance we might never have become rowers.’

Me:’ What has rowing taught you?’

Cameron: ‘well, the biggest thing that we have learned is the ability to take a long-term approach to our goals. When we started rowing, we wanted to make it to the United States Junior National Team.  It took three years of hard work, but from that point we were hooked on the sport.  By the time we had graduated and made the decision to try for the Olympics, we were very comfortable with the idea that it was going to be a four year journey with no guarantee of success.

Tyler: ’Rowing teaches you hard work and patience.  It is not a sport where you can cut corners. For instance, we have been practicing twice a day six days a week since September for the Oxford Cambridge race in April.  Rowing also teaches you to be consistent day in and day out.’

Cameron: ‘this is a sport where sacrifice is rewarded. Because of the rowing, we have made friends all over the world. It has taken us to interesting places where we wouldn’t have imagined seeing otherwise.’

Me: ‘What do you besides rowing? It must be taking a lot of your energy, since you train six hours a day and six days a week.’

Tyler: ‘Right now, when we’re not rowing were usually either studying, eating, or sleeping.. Apart from that, we do stuff that most people our age do. We watch movies, read books, socialize, and so on.’

Me: ‘How was Harvard?’

Cameron: ‘It was a great experience.  Similar to Oxford, we were able to study and compete at very high levels.  Our schedules were a little less hectic because we were there for four years and the rowing season was less compressed.’

Tyler: ’Like Oxford, everyone there was excellent at something, so it was quite an eclectic and talented group of individuals.  The combination of such gifted peers and professors made for a quite a special place.’

Me: ‘Tell me something about your parents? Do they have favourites? Do they treat you like stars?’

Cameron: ‘No, it’s a pretty balanced situation.’

Tyler: ‘They also definitely see us as different people.’

Me: ‘you must have raised quite a havoc when you were growing up. It’s difficult enough to raise one child I can’t imagine having to raise the two of you.’

Tyler (laughs): ‘Yes, we are trying to make up for it now.’

Me: ’Most of the people who read this blog are prospective students who want to get into our School. What sort of advice would you give them?’

Cameron: ’I’d start off by saying it’s been an incredible experience so far. When you are preparing your application, try and ask yourself what you would bring to the student body.  Hopefully your answer is in addition to high marks, a unique perspective that few will have.  That, at least in my opinion, would make a very interesting candidate.

Tyler: ’Should you be accepted, think about how you can maximise your experience. Saïd offers so many learning opportunities both inside and outside the classroom, I would recommending doing your best to do as much as possible. 

Cameron: ‘And once you are here, don’t be afraid to take risks. Don’t shy away from pursuing excellence.  Abraham Lincoln once said, “Whatever you be, be a good one.”’

Tyler: ‘Yes, try and surprise yourself, it won’t hurt you.’

 Me: ‘What about your future plans? Where do you see yourself five years down the line? More importantly, do you see yourself working together or separately?’

Tyler:  ’Should history be a guide, I imagine we will probably be working as a team and doing something of entrepreneurial.’

Cameron: ‘We have a lot of interests and curiosity so it’s hard to know for sure, but whatever it is we’re going to try to do our best at it.

 Tyler: (laughing): ‘On the other hand, maybe we’ll do separate things, that way we’ll have interesting stories to share.  Let’s see, you never know.’

Me: ‘What have you learned from your experience of social networking sites?’

Cameron: ‘If you have an idea and you are passionate about it, go for it.

Tyler: ‘Absolutely, ideas that you would like to see happen are often times just waiting for you to do them.

Me: ‘Thank you very much. It has been a real pleasure interviewing you both.’

And it was, for sure!

1)      That as per the latest FT ratings, we are now the second best Business School in UK and the sixteenth best in the world.  Yay! Yay! Yay!

2)      Oxford is a cute little town with 800 years of history. That means that the college that you now live in was built when our great, great, great, great, great, greaaaaaaat grandpa was not even born.

3)      Some of the events held at the School allow you to rub shoulders with the best of the Business world. So the next time you run into a snob who boasts about his exquisite knowledge, you can very casually mention what Sir Terry Leahy said to you in his supper or what Roger Carr had to say in his speaker session.

4)      Diversity of the class means one day you sit next to a French Chef who explains how to make pumpkin pudding fantastic and the very next day you will be listening to a life scientist explain strange physiognomic phenomena.

5)      The authors who changed the world are your teachers. Some of the best books such as fresh Lipstick (Linda Scott), how Brands became Icons (Douglas Holt) and Social Entrepreneurship (Alex Nicholls) have been written by faculty members.

Things you would die before you tell anyone about your MBA

1)      That actually when you spoke to that great industry leader, you had spinach stuck between your teeth.

2)      That some of the books written by your teachers are really heavy stuff and you haven’t read them.

3)      That some of your fellow students achievements can sometimes make you feel small. Getting into the Business School was your biggest career achievement so far.

4)      The subject that you just passed has the highest number of distinction holders. (You wonder when they really study when most of the times they are hanging out with you in the Common Room.)

5)      That despite being the best of the best (thats why you are at Saïd after all!), you still have to look for a job, go through the hassles of applications, resumes and cover letters, interviews, case studies and yes, rejections!

There are two very distinct characteristics that we all seem to exhibit. On one hand, we are competing amongst ourselves to prove how experienced, brilliant and intellectually superior we are from others in the Class of MBA 2009-2010. There are long discussions at lunch time on whether such and such kind of entrepreneur venture of IT can succeed. As if the person him/her self had launched a hundred successful venture of the same kind. It is not uncommon to have a debate over which share is more likely to succeed, with both parties involved offering authoritative statements on the issue . I, myself have been involved in interesting arguments over superiority of partial welfare states (such as United Kingdom) over non-welfare ones (such as United States). Over issues such as price ceilings are never suppose to work and ‘government had to do something about the rents’. It seemed like everyone had an opinion over almost everything and it was must for everyone to express it. And nowhere, is this trait more pronounced than in Oxford Business Networks (OBNs).How ironic, when the whole purpose of such groups is to bring like-minded people together.

Yet, increasingly towards the end, I felt that we all wanted to belong to something and identify ourselves with some sort of that very word called the ‘group’. Why else would people spend two hours of that precious revision week teaching others so that they can pass the exams? Why else do we hold events such as Diwali Bop where ethnic community unite together, but that half the function was organized by non-South Asians? Why else would so many people attend Japanese/ Korean Happy Hour? Why hang out an hour before the exam at Starbucks, when Costa was just across the road? Because we all knew we would find our sub-fusced mates at Starbucks.

The answer occurred to me when we recently became each other’s Secret Santa (we were each assigned a person to give a Christmas present of 5 to 10 pounds. The identity of the Santa was hidden from the recipient). The spirit of Christmas brought back the memories of good times spent with family and friends. Many of us had all come from different parts of the world with a desire to dominate the class. Yet, now that most of us are vacationing and away from college, we miss our friends. Why? Because the sense of belonging has surprisingly turned out to be stronger than we all thought.

I came to the conclusion, that individualism and sense of belonging are both equally important parts of a personality. In some people, one is dominant over the other. Some of our classmates would tell you, that the most important reason for them to join this program was to make intellectual friends that came from diverse backgrounds while they took an year off work. Others will express a strong desire to succeed in a certain field, such as investment banking. But the most important thing is balance, which is quite honestly, hard to maintain. We all want to be successful but professional achievement alone does not equals a life termed as successful. We all need a support network and these three hundred students are where we all draw our strength from.

As a student at Saïd, one has to be open to new ideas, new ways of doing things. We are often surprised at the level of disagreement only in the end to find out that there was no right or wrong answer. Most discussions end with, ‘it depends’. In many cases, one has to unlearn what we have gained in our pre-Oxford lives, to grasp new concepts. One has to be able to sit through seven hours of coaching plus a two hour networking session all in a single day. So an MBA student has to be a constant bubble of energy.

My intention here is not to discourage anyone from pursuing an MBA. Just that one has to think things through before investing a whole year of time, huge amount of savings and infinite bundles of energy into such a program. I, myself am having a wonderful time learning new things. It’s whole new world at SBS that I am still learning to integrate with my existing one. But yes, everyday is a new beginning. A different challenge each day and a new friend to greet. Are you up for it?