Women in MBA

Women in MBA

Rotman School of Management has been ranked the top most in Canada. There has been snowballing of the female student ratio over several years. Women in Business have been taking up more and more responsibilities and are making a difference in the world of business.

Scoreleap invited Pankhudi Singh, a Rotman graduate working as an Analyst in Toronto Police Service to be our esteemed speaker for the webinar. Scoreleap Admissions Services helped her in the journey of the application process to Rotman School of Management.

Women in MBA

Question 1: According to you, how does MBA help empower women? Could you please talk a little about women’s perspective towards MBA?

Pankhudi mentions: I feel MBA does help a lot to both men and women in growing as a professional. Usually it is seen that the ratio of men and women in school and colleges is not balanced. Also, often women lack in showcasing their skills and achievement as compared to their male counterparts.So, pursuing MBA from big business schools helps to overcome this shortcoming and women can evolve as business leaders in the future. Being a woman if you have achieved a lot on the professional front, then business schools like Rotman offer scholarships to women for their higher education.Doing an MBA from another country helps you to connect with people from different cultures and countries for instance I got an opportunity to meet someone who was a food taster in some organisation which I found to be quite interesting and strange. In a way women may feel more empowered in terms of taking up newer challenges on the professional and personal level.

Question 2: Could you give us an insight into your MBA program @Rotman School of Management, Canada? Also, highlight the specific reasons for choosing Canada?

Pankhudi shares: As per the google search, Rotman offers the best MBA curriculum amongst other business schools in Canada. The school offers a huge overview of management subjects for someone to choose for further specialization. Also, MBA from Rotman helps provide options to grow in a career like enhanced working opportunities. There is a concept of Creative Destruction Labs wherein you can work with the start-up of your choice and help them in strategy formulation, funding and various other activities. A unique feature that Rotman offers is access to the Self Development Lab for working on self development aspects of an individual. You can focus on self-development in terms of analysing the strength and weakness from the leadership. The director who runs the SDL is very approachable and provides constructive feedback for self realisation of one’s potential.Also, the professors are equally supportive in providing all the guidance and mentorship for upcoming issues in the curriculum. The exposure to the diverse culture is very good @Rotman. The class ratio is 60% men and 40% women and the learning environment @ Rotman makes every effort to bridge the gap between men and women and provide equal learning opportunities for women counterparts. The very presence of prestigious organizations close to Rotman provides easy networking opportunities during the entire course curriculum. Talking about myself, I only applied for business schools within Canada because I always wanted to settle here in the country post my graduation.Canada is a very liberal country in terms of the career choices and preferences one may opt at any stage of life. Thereby, I got the best of both worlds here in Canada.

Question 3: How does school facilitate or help to bring about a balance between study and family?

Pankhudi shares: The Rotman learning environment is quite challenging yet flexible. You can choose your electives in the first year and plan for the course curriculum accordingly to strike a balance. The Study counselor helps to effectively strategise on the course curriculum. He/she provides the counselling on the weak domains that requires more academic focus. Also detailed classes on communication skills help to improve upon the writing and speaking skills. These further help to overcome the linguistic barrier in turn helping to pen down better curriculum reports and assignments in line with the business school requirements. Also, there is an option for dropping off from the course curriculum in case someone is not able to handle the challenges.The best thing about Rotman is that the overall environment in terms of the people is very friendly and approachable. One can find all the answers to respective queries by reaching out to the concerned person under one roof. In conclusion, MBA program helps to streamline your life and strike a balance between personal and professional life utilising all the available resources.

Women in MBA

Question 4: What different career opportunities await for women MBA graduates? Also, how did Rotman help you in finding the right opportunity?

Rotman provides networking opportunities with several employers to understand to help analyse the fitment in the respective roles. Also there are various clubs in Rotman that help you to prepare better for the interview in respective domains. Everyone will be assigned a career coach who would help to work on the stories, resume and elevated pitch. In comparison to other business schools within Canada, Rotman has the best career centre in terms of preparing the students well for the placement sessions. Some of my batchmates did start their start-ups with the vision and available funding. Another interesting feature @ Rotman is the Leadership Rotation Program. Under this program you get to work within various teams of an organisation for 2 years. Getting exposed to different team cultures for 6 months, gives a better understanding of the work culture within the organisation as a whole.Academically, GPA is one of the key focal points @ Rotman. As a general eligibility criteria, you should have a GPA greater than 3.5.

Question 5: Based on your experience , how do you think the life of women MBA students changes after they graduate ?

Pankhudi says: Usually the 2 yr program @ Rotman is a very tough curriculum, you will hardly find personal and family time. Post completion, it gives you time to settle both on the professional and personal front.

Question 6: What challenges did you face when you decided to take up an MBA? What suggestions would you give to young women out there experiencing the same?

The biggest challenge was to convince my family for this decision. Since I already had a Master’s so they wanted me to settle down on the personal front. I had to make them understand the importance of this curriculum in my life wherein I would be in a better position to guide my nephew and nieces in case they plan to pursue the same decision. Second biggest challenge was raising the finance for this particular program which was quite expensive. In India, we need to have collateral for a loan application which I did not have so I had to approach a financial company for help.With regards to the MBA application process, I took help from Kalyan @ Scoreleap Test Prep Pvt. Ltd. He guided me through the entire admission requirements from preparing narratives to recommendation letters etc. For GMAT preparation, I took help from one of my friends. To conclude, I would recommend to be focussed on your goal and prepare for the execution accordingly.

Scoreleap Test Prep would like to thank Pankhudi Singh for sharing the helpful insights on the MBA journey from Rotman School of Management. We @ Scoreleap believe that women can always excel given the right opportunities at the right time. Take the difficult move in your life and register for best GMAT online prep @ Scoreleap.