u/Careless_Earth_4389

Hey everyone, looking for some advice before pulling the trigger on a MacBook Air M5.

Background: Starting my MBA in about a month and planning to go into finance (equity research / investment management down the line). My use case will mostly be Excel work, financial modelling, research, a lot of browser tabs, and general productivity. No video editing or anything creative.

What I’m confused about:

•	13 vs 15 inch — I’ve gone back and forth on this. The 15 is obviously better for spreadsheet work given the screen real estate, but is it worth the bulk if I’m carrying it around campus daily? Does anyone actually regret going 13 for work that’s Excel-heavy?  
•	RAM — Base is 16GB now which is a big improvement, but worth going to 24GB? I don’t want to feel the pinch 3-4 years from now.

Budget: Not looking at base-only, open to sensible upgrades if they’re actually worth it — just don’t want to over-spec for no reason.

Would love to hear from people who use Macs for finance work specifically, or MBA folks who’ve had theirs for a year or two. What do you wish you’d specced differently?

I’ve been binge watching a bunch of B-school vlogs lately and something’s been bothering me more than it should 😅

Why does the mess food look like carbs on carbs on carbs all day?

Like breakfast is parathas, lunch is chole bhature or rajma chawal, dinner again something similar… and I’m just sitting there thinking — where is the protein?

I’m not even someone who’s super strict about diet or anything, but if this is what you’re eating every day, doesn’t it just… catch up with you?

Especially in B-school where:
- you’re sitting a lot
- stress is high
- sleep is messed up

And then on top of that your food is mostly just heavy carbs. Feels like a recipe for feeling sluggish + gaining weight over time.

And it’s not even about “gym bros need protein” — just basic balance yaar. Like at least give proper options:
eggs, paneer, more dal, something consistent.

Also makes me wonder — these places charge so much, focus so much on placements and all, but food (which you eat literally every day) seems like an afterthought?

Or maybe vlogs just show the worst days and I’m overthinking it?

Anyone here from a B-school — is it actually like this or am I getting the wrong picture?

I am exhausted and disappointed and I want to scream it somewhere.

Attempt 1: 94. Fine, try again.

Attempt 2: 91. Went backwards. Kept going anyway.

Attempt 3: 99.27. And 99.86 in XAT.

Rejected from XLRI Jamshedpur. XLRI Delhi. IIM Kozhikode Waitlisted 23 in EWS. Waitlisted 80 at shillong. Both inconvertible.Waiting on IIFT and MDI but I already know.

Three years of my life. And I’m going to IIM Udaipur.

I know I’m supposed to say “Udaipur is great, it’s still an IIM, I’ll make the most of it.” I can’t say that right now. Because right now it feels like the consolation prize at the end of a race I ran three times and still lost.

8/7/6, workex. 16 months. Bad profile. I knew it. Everyone knew it. I just thought, stupidly, that 99+ would be enough to overcome it. It wasn’t.

And the thing nobody tells you is that a bad result after three attempts doesn’t feel like a setback. It feels like a verdict. Like the system looked at everything you are and said - this far, not further.

I don’t know what Udaipur changes. I don’t know if two years from now things look different. Right now they don’t. Right now it just feels like a very expensive, very long way to end up exactly where I didn’t want to be.

I just wanted to say it somewhere. That sometimes you do everything right and it still doesn’t work out. And that’s allowed to hurt.