Some business leaders enjoy managing people more than managing numbers. That's the hurdle Renee Baiorunos faced when she decided to pursue an MBA.

"I really don't enjoy the quantitative side of things," says Baiorunos, a 26-year-old MBA student at Georgetown's University's McDonough School of Business. But she realized that the road to business leadership requires quantitative skills, not just people skills, and made sure she can manage the math.

Now in her second year of Georgetown's two-year, full-time MBA program, Baiorunos spent her first year taking required courses in finance, microeconomics, macroeconomics, statistics, operations management, financial accounting, and managerial accounting. Was it fun? Not really. Worthwhile? Definitely. Having mastered the quantitative basics, Baiorunos is now free to pursue her passions. She can take courses in corporate social responsibility and nonprofit management, as well as courses at Georgetown's School of Public Policy.

Survival Keys
In a sea of quantitative course requirements, how did Baiorunos keep her head above water? With a little help from her friends and various other resources. She recommends the following:

• taking GMAT Preparation Courses. Before tackling the Graduate Management Admissions Test, Baiorunos took a prep course from Princeton Review. Her first GMAT scores put her in the 95th percentile for verbal skills, but only in the 60th percentile on the quantitative side. To help change that, "I needed to focus more on the quantitative part," she says. She practiced again and again, and retook the GMAT. Not surprisingly, her score improved. That helped her gain admission to Georgetown.
• taking pre-term courses. As an undergraduate major in human resources development, Baiorunos studied calculus, statistics, accounting and finance at the University of Florida. Still, she sought even more preparation. Before she started the MBA program in the fall of 2005, Baiorunos took a pre-term course from Georgetown that covered calculus, statistics, accounting, finance, and economics. "Even more prep would have been useful," she says. For example, some MBA applicants take Math for Management, a course available online from UCLA Extension, to help improve their math skills, boost their GMAT results, and strengthen their transcript.
• using tutors. When she needed help with her coursework, Baiorunos met with Georgetown's teaching assistants, who are available to give MBA students one-on-one attention.
• getting help from classmates. Georgetown's MBA program "is not a competitive environment," says Baiorunos, noting that students often study together and support one another. "One of my classmates has been the biggest help of anyone," she says.
• juggling your responsibilities. Even with plenty of preparation and support, Baiorunos has found that she needs to spend extra time on finance and accounting courses. Still, she has manages to balance her coursework with extracurricular activities. She serves as vice president of Georgetown's Graduate Marketing Association, for example. "There are a lot of balls to juggle," she says. "It's more extreme than I was anticipating."

Electives Count
Enticing second-year electives and internship opportunities helped give Baiorunos the motivation she needed to emerge successfully from her grueling first-year courses. Now she can focus more on electives and extracurricular activities. In addition to her leadership with the Graduate Marketing Association, Baiorunos serves as president of Georgetown's chapter of Net Impact-a 125-member organization that helps students and professionals use their skills to encourage social responsibility.

In fact, her involvement in Net Impact led to a once-in-a-lifetime internship this past summer at the organization's San Francisco headquarters. Net Impact aims to foster a network of new leaders who use the powers of business to make positive social, environmental, and economic impacts.

Baiorunos hopes that eventually she will lead an organization and set policies while others focus on the quantitative side of things. Thanks to her training in accounting, statistics and other grueling disciplines, though, she will understand what the financial officers are saying.