What should I learn before business school?

From Sharran:

One of the most valuable skills that you can develop before/through business school is the ability to speed read. By this I don't mean that you have to read War and Peace in one afternoon, but to have the ability to rapidly scan through a conceptually dense document and quickly grasp the big picture will do wonders for you.

Business School does a good job of giving you relevant material to read... you will never find professors just assigning chapters of textbooks for you to read. A typical reading assignment out of a text book will look like:

Chapter 2: Read pp. 14-17, skim 17-25, read case on 26.

So if you were half-way smart, you would understand that you need to pay specific attention to the just three pages and skim the rest/look at the pictures, whatever.

There is no shortage of information for someone interested in working in the financial world. This summer, I have been reading everything from technical manuals on the Volatility of Options to Freakonomics, and I can see my speed and comprehension improve everyday. By the end of the summer I am confident that I will have read/skimmed at least 15-20 of the business best-sellers.

So a few pieces of advice, especially if you are an incoming MBA student:

1. Take a speed reading class if possible, I can guarantee that it will be worth every penny
2. Start reading "technical" stuff outside your area of expertise, especially if you have an engineering background (yes, engineers don't read much).
3. Pick a newspaper and read it everyday, skim another (to work on your skimming)
4. Read before you go to bed; even if it is a few pages
5. Read digg.com

Learn to use a highlighter. I will write about the Four Wise Men Highlighting strategy sometime, because that's definitely the rhythm of the samba...

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