"Congratulations! You have been selected for admission to 2020-2022 batch of the PGP in Management at IIM A"
These are the words almost every MBA aspirant in the country dreams to hear and to my utter and absolute joy, I got to read these words on my phone on the sunny midday of May 8th, 2020. Yay!
Now I am sure anyone who is taking the effort to read this another 'strategy post' by a lucky fellow who got into a dream B-school and now cannot get enough of the glory, so is doing the mere aspirants a favour by exposing her oh-so-secret recipe to get a top percentile in MBA exams, would be left disappointed because,
I ain't gonna talk about my study hours in any way.
What I am going to tell you, if you are still interested, is the 'attitude' that helped me secure a place in IIM A and in general, has always helped me in life. Four years ago, 18 years old me,
SOMEHOW managed to become a Top-20 contestant of the very prestigious and intimidating, Femina Miss India 2016 when almost all odds were not in my favour. Yes, I had never worn stilettos before the audition and had you known me before that, you would have laughed at how pathetically socially awkward I was.
Now, you would wonder why I am talking about a beauty pageant to you, an MBA aspirant. That is because, at present, the same girl
SOMEHOW managed to secure a seat at the very prestigious and horribly intimidating, IIM Ahemdabad when almost all odds were not in my favour. It was my first attempt, without any work ex and with Maths as an enemy all my life. Yes, I got a shoddy 96.69 percentile in the land of the 99.99.......blah blah blah percentilers.
After I received my very unexpected call for an interview in January (most likely because I am a lawyer who has studied in an NLU), most people's primary reaction was to comfort me instantaneously with words like "you must give CAT 2020 because I am sure you will land in the holy trinity next year". In my head, I used to fume.."Dude, what about the fact that I have received an effing interview letter from IIM A this year".
This is what I want to stress on in the hopefully not too long and boring article. Again, tread with caution because, here you may not find everything you want to hear. From January 2020 I have been teaching as a faculty for mainly VA-RC at coaching. I guess the institute director gave me the job because of my knack of
pravachan. What I found out in my brief stint at teaching-lockdown took that away from me was the fact that most aspirants do not dare to dream or to express their dreams. Even with so much time left for CAT 2020, they weren't optimistic about securing a good percentile. Which is so absurd! It made me go bonkers, I wanted to scream in all their ears and I did, quite literally, that if you can't even dare to dream about something then you absolutely cannot achieve it.
I think this is where most candidates lose out in the race. Because of only a minor segment of the lakhs of candidates who sit for MBA exams actually dream of getting into a top B-school. The rest are only hoping for a not too embarrassing percentile.
This pessimist attitude is so apparent everywhere around me.. even in the interviews of a few top colleges that bestowed a call on me. In fact, in my IIM A interview, all I could see were nervous and sweaty faces around me (one of the reasons may be that the interview was in the unbearably humid city of joy, Kolkata). Whereas, I, the
pravachan lady had only a measly 96 point percentile to offer to the interviewers and..... a lot of
pravachan but, still was most at ease. I think I seriously bored the interviewers into selecting me.
Another major reason apart from boring the interviewers for me getting selected was I think, the fact that I never viewed my most precious, once-in-a-lifetime IIM A interview as a battle to be conquered. Umm, ya, leave the macho to the GEM candidates. *Guffaws
* But, seriously no offence!
I treated the interview as the most unexpected and happy gift that had been given to me in a long time. Because, getting an IIM A interview was nothing but, a gift. And I wanted to enjoy it.. make the most of it. So I did not get nervous, at all. And I know most of you must be thinking that it cannot be true. Anyone and everyone would get nervous in such a major interview but, I did not, honestly. Does anyone get nervous while opening a gift? And I guess, that is how I somehow managed to convince the interviewers or maybe coerce them into choosing me.
So yes, the point of this may be pointless article is that the same ingredients were applied by me in getting into Femina Miss India and IIM Ahemdabad. Those are dreaming like crazy, being even more crazily optimistic and like Mark Manson said, dreaming about not just the result but, also the hardwork and failure that would be required for that dream to get fulfilled.
Because honestly, if I can achieve all these things then I guess anyone can. You just have to want it enough, do your work and stop worrying about the results. And don't worry about luck because, to a large and very significant extent, people create their own luck.
The reason why I decided to pen down my thoughts is because of the discouragement I received for attempting to even join a B-school. Almost every person, apart from my parents, told me that I was wasting my time and that I should rather join a law firm. The only thing that kept me going, and stopped me from leaving the competition weeks before CAT, was my crazy optimism, nothing else!