MBA: the Maths Factor

At some point on the MBA programme, a subject might come up that you feel nervous about tackling. That was the case for full time MBA student Cynthia Halatyn but here she explains how she got to grips with it.

An MBA is a generalist degree, which means you have to master concepts in a variety of disciplines. When I embarked on my MBA course, I knew the biggest challenge for me would be the quantitative courses. My undergraduate degree was in my passion, Political Science, which helped me develop my analytical and writing skills, but frankly didn’t require much in the way of mathematics. I took only the required maths courses to graduate, and when I started my MBA, it had been 15 years since my last maths course. I racked up some financial accounting experience during my career, but my first maths course on the MBA was a painful and difficult experience. 

Analytical Support for Decision Making is a statistics based course that requires a lot data analysis, calculations, and understanding of the normal distribution. As I struggled through the course at the breakneck pace that is inherent in a 12 month MBA, I felt anxious and frustrated daily. Just as I began to understand a concept, we would move on to the next lecture topic. 

As I referenced in my post on group projects, my team helped me tremendously with understanding our assignment and did most of the heavy lifting. When it came time for the exam, however, I was on my own. But where to start?

I found that I struggled to understand the concepts by relying solely on the textbook and my lecture notes and I needed outside intervention. Thankfully, I had a fantastic professor who made himself available to students, which I assure you, isn’t always the case with academics. As I worked through sample exam questions, I was in his office weekly to discuss where I was getting stuck on problems and he helped me understand my cognitive hurdles and move past them to begin completing questions. 

It took me weeks of revision work to feel okay about the exam. I often spent hours upon end in conference rooms alone with a white board working and reworking problems. As I practised though, my confidence grew. 

The night before the exam, I was restless and slept terribly. Even after all my hard work, I was still afraid I might fail. When the exam finally started, a calm washed over me. As I worked through one problem, then the next, I realised I really knew what I was doing. 

After the exam, when fellow students asked how I did, I responded, “I either aced it, or completely misunderstood the questions!”  When we finally received our term 1 marks, I found out it was the former. My highest mark of the term, an 88, was in the course I was most afraid of and that means the world to me. News of my success spread around the business school, and in term 2, I found fellow students actually coming to me for exam advice and tutoring! 

If you told me 15 years ago as I struggled through a mandatory calculus class at SMU that I would go on to get one of the top marks on a graduate level maths course, I would have dropped dead from shock. Hard work pays off. Grit your teeth and lean into the courses you’re uncomfortable with. Whatever your “trial by fire” course turns out to be, I assure you, not only are you capable of passing, you can ace it. 

This post first appeared on Cynthia's blog Lone Star Lass. You can connect with Cynthia on Linked In.

About Cynthia Halatyn

Cynthia Halatyn is a student on the full time MBA programme at Strathclyde Business School.