We rarely have the time or attention span to sit and read 2-hour a day for a week to complete a standard 250-300 page book. The admission team realizes that to succeed in an MBA program, you must be a voracious reader. On average, a top MBA candidate reads close to 25000 words per day – close to 50 pages of a standard book. During the test season, it would climb up to 50000 to 75000 words per day or 100 to 125 pages per day.
Remembering Information: I rarely note down what I have read. I try to find the emotion, life lesson, author’s journey that led to the position, and the theme of the book. Unlike my goal to write in an interesting way to convey unique and traditional ideas, MBA candidates’ goal is to capture the attention of the management with a succinct summary of trends backed up by reliable data and patterns of past events & actions.
After a Global Experiential learning trip, one of the deliverables is a report that is presented to the client. Defining the audience, understanding their expectations, and capturing all the relevant information and strategy to grow, maintain the market position, or resolve a regulatory/funding/process hurdle require removing significant background information. Although your personal experience feeds into the recommendations, reports are rarely the place to capture your rationale.
Motivation behind the question
The interview question on what you have learned from the book forces you to capture only the essentials. The idea that most books we find interesting have a thread of similarity with our life events, although interesting in a book club has minimum relevance for an admission interview. They are trying to apply the question to measure your values, worldview, and interest in the post-MBA function & industry.
Preparing for Book Summary
I have found .. book summary section to be an excellent place to gather the book notes on some of the best sellers ...
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