It was a pleasant summer afternoon and we were wandering around in excitement looking for our National Flag among 200 flags flying over Sherbrooke Street in this alluring and highly diverse city of Montréal, our new home for at least next two years and hopefully thereafter. We thought to ourselves that it could not be better timing arriving here in 2017, the year of anniversaries, when the entire country was celebrating Canada’s 150th anniversary and Montréal had just turned 375 years old.
Yes, 2017 was a year of great events and so it seems only fitting that we would start our life-changing adventure then. Why did we decide to pursue MBA together and why in Canada? Why was this decision such a big deal for us? Let’s explore the answers to these questions by giving a quick self-introduction.
Our names are Ishita and Mohit Arora and we both worked as engineers in multinational companies for a few years in major cities in India where we lived for the most part of our early lives. It was a tremendous start to our careers, but by staying there we could not experience the real worldly outlook that we believe is so important in today’s globalized and connected world. Quality of life, which not only means to have access to better essential life resources but also the certainty that comes with a country’s culture and policies, took the second position in the list of priorities that we had for our future.
Canada and McGill turned out to be the perfect intersection of the choices and priorities we put together, to ensure that we would meet both our short and long-term life goals.
We applied in the first round of November 2016, got admitted shortly afterwards and joined McGill in the Summer of 2017. To be honest, it did not take us long to conclude that we had made the right choice. When you are part of a top-tier business school where your classroom feels like a mini-world comprising of outstanding individuals from almost all over the globe, what else could you ask for? The global McGill brand, the small cohort size and the integrated classroom experience delivered by some of the world’s best professors definitely also helped validating our choice of joining this world-class MBA program.
In addition to what McGill offers,Montreal is a very affordable and exceedingly student-friendly city. It is no wonder that it was awarded the title of best student city in the world! With this in mind, we felt it was a place where one can have a true quality of life and an enjoyable experience. We were lucky enough to find a place to stay very close to campus, which unarguably is a great asset in any major city (especially when you wake up at 8:30 and have a class at 9:00 am next door). It took us a weekend to set up our home and we were ready to commence this once-in-a-lifetime journey of becoming MBAs.
Since then, it has been almost 6 months, which have passed like the blink of an eye. Although it may seem like a short time, we have already started developing a new perspective of how we look at things. As soon as we started our MBA, we were positioned to think like business leaders and integrate our learnings to propose valuable strategic recommendations.
As a result of intense practice, structured thinking and impact analysis have been imbibed into our thought processes, no matter if we are involved in cracking group cases or discussing ideas in classroom.
And on top of learning new subjects and making new connections, we have found ourselves merging with the culture of this beautiful country. In addition to the friends we made in this wonderful cohort, we were fortunate enough to have each other to share our feelings, career ambitions and everything else. We had never thought of sharing a classroom (although we agreed on sharing our lives), but it is turning out to be a great opportunity for us to understand each other even better.
Our journey has just started, and we are already 25% done. I guess that makes us 25% MBAs! The MBA is an intense journey, packed with great challenges, greater opportunities and some of the greatest parties (did we or any of our peers mention about O-Week?).
We are enjoying each and every moment of this new life and let us tell you, it is true what they say: you live only once, and you only do an MBA once. So make sure you pick the right place, just like we did !
About Mohit and Ishita Arora
We both are analytically wired engineers from India and share (almost) a similar life style. We celebrate our togetherness as much as we can. We got married in January 2016, were lucky to receive our McGill offers in November 2016 and joined McGill in August 2017.
NDLR: Mohit is now starting his Winter Internship at Autodesk as Business Analyst in the Industry Strategy Group in Montreal, and he will be doing an internship as a Marketing Associate at Janssen, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson this Summer in Toronto ! Ishita will be doing a summer internship in Montreal, at Bombardier in the procurement team.
Desautels MBA Program
- Find out how Desautels’ small-size cohort creates unique opportunities by contacting our Student Ambassadors.
- Connect with a recruiter to learn more about pursuing an MBA at McGill.
