by Shervin Shahidi, MBA Candidate 2017
Shervin is a current MBA Candidate at the Schulich School of Business with over 10 years of experience in VFX feature film, 3D Feature animation, VFX and animated TV series. He has worked for companies including Lucasfilm and Animal Logic, and was a character rigger for the film ‘Legend of the Guardians.

If there was a Schulich applicant with a complete lack of business knowledge, that must have been me in early 2015.

After all, none of my academic background in Biology, Genetics and Computer Animation had ever prepared me for the concepts that we were going to discuss in my first term at Schulich. Before my MBA, my knowledge of Accounting and Finance could have been easily summarized as follows: There are people who work in Financial institutions … and I have to pay my taxes!

Not surprisingly then, I was very anxious about the first day of official classes when I would have to sit among peers who had much more exposure to business concepts than I did. That’s where Flying Start came into place.

Thanks to the excellent idea of hosting a Flying Start prep course and special thanks to its organizers, the program helped me to establish a basic, yet very helpful foundation on the core topics that we would be taught later during the semesters.

Without a doubt it was a condensed schedule – packed with four days of none-stop conversations and lessons covering topics from Math, Accounting and Finance to Case Analysis.

You may think it’s a bit daunting to learn all of this in the course of a few days. However, to that I would say, fear nothing! The professors who teach the program are friendly and welcome questions from students who are coming from all walks of life. They took us through basic concepts, and most importantly the terminology that was necessary to deal with upcoming courses. Flying Start gave us a first glance at what we were going to learn very soon in class; it was a thorough and helpful peek at what was coming – which I definitely needed.

Without a doubt I would recommend Flying Start to any incoming students to Schulich: whether you have a previous background in business (for which Flying Start is a valuable refresher), or whether you, similar to me, have no idea what debits and credits are!

 Starting your MBA in January?

Click here to register for Flying Start!