1. XLRI is the best management school in India not located in Ahmedabad, Bangalore or Kolkata. Maybe Lucknow too. 50/50.
2. People usually have to work too hard to get an elite college tag. An XLRI MBA is not as prestigious as a B.Tech from an old IIT, but we didn't have to crack Irodov to get in.
3. My father says that the only four worthy career goals are to be a doctor, IITian, IIMian or an IAS officer. One of these things is a lot easier than the others. See point 2.
4. We have won the XL-IIMC sports meet three times in a row now. We beat Joka so hard last time they have cancelled this year's event.
5. Reservation nahi hai. XLRI is the best equal opportunity B-school in India.
6. Speaking of equal opportunities, any B-school aspirant in India can make it into XLRI next year, provided they work hard enough now. You don't need to go back in time to 2009 and change your 10th boards results.
Fix this IIM-Bangalore.
7. Google 'How I went from 44 percentile in XAT to XLRI' for a perfect zero-to-hero story. XLRI is like that brokerage firm in Pursuit of Happyness who give Will Smith a chance. IIM Bangalore would have rejected Will Smith and hired a Harvard intern. There would have been no movie.
8. A lot of B-schools (including IMI and IMT Ghaziabad) turned me down the same year XLRI let me in. It's like Bloomsbury who signed J K Rowling after 12 publishers rejected her.
Except the part where J K Rowling becomes successful.
9. XLRI gave us the chance to forever have a vastly better career than regular engineers who are slightly inferior to us at school level MCQs.
10. The first term at XL pushed my neurosis to such new limits that I am not scared of work, deadlines or dying anymore.
11. The likelihood of being unable to finish the course was real only in the first two terms, but it was palpable enough to make me treasure this degree until death. It was like almost having a miscarriage and then delivering a healthy baby. Where the baby is my career.
12. Tolerance for annoying people significantly improves from the near constant exposure to them. It is also a suitable environment to suppress social disorders and practice behaving like a functional person before initiation into the corporate world.
13. There is an implicit assumption that anyone from XL can add anyone else in campus on Facebook as long as we don't talk in real life.
14. Academically focused people have a significant chance of not achieving their dreams and ending up with ordinary placements, which is gratifying in a depraved way. The randomness of the placement process gives mediocre students a
fair unfair shot.
15. The fact that we can afford to sneer at job profiles millions of our peers would kill to have is proof of how blessed we are. When we look for meaning and fulfilment it suggests most of our Maslow's pyramid is already taken care of. That's more than many can claim at 25.
About the Author:
Abhishek Tahlan is a second year student at XLRI Jamshedpur and is part of the InsideIIM student team 2016-17.