With the admissions season on fire, the pressure increases on the aspiring students who want to crack the best b-schools in India and emerge as the best among a lot of thousand others. The pressure boils down to one point when one reaches the final and the decision making round – The Personal Interview Round.
How will you feel if you get the admission letter from Hogwarts or if you get a chance to visit the lands of Narnia? think about that feeling for a while. Think a little more. Yes, almost there. Exactly! That’s how I felt when I got my offer letter from IIM Bangalore – confused, didn’t know how to react, excited, happy, proud (maybe). The first time I felt like I have actually achieved something huge in my life.
MBA is perhaps one of the most wanted (read: overrated) degrees in India. Lakhs of students appear for dozens of exams and are then selected in hundreds of colleges. This process is a well-oiled machine which has been creating, nurturing and churning out corporate honchos who will conquer the business world. Bold newspaper headlines about placement scenarios, fat paychecks and that distant Sharma ji's son who became an Investment banker, all of these factors are functional in making an aspirant believe in the potency of an MBA.
We are in the middle of GD/WAT/PI process and in about two week's time, the process will be over for almost all top colleges in the country. By now many of few must have had their processes too. But hey, wait a moment this advice might be coming a little late but very effective not just for your MBA but life in general. I have taken this from a book, “Success stories of the Rich and Happy” it talks about a few toxic words and what it does to you.
Anne Lamott once wrote,
A factor that all b-schools like to boast of is diversity - diversity of background, experience and gender. But, there’s another diversity that exists - personalities. Although every individual is different, there are 7 kinds of people who are present in every classroom. These peers come with some peculiar characteristics that make it easier to spot them. Love them or hate them, but you can never ignore them.
"What do you learn in an MBA program from an IIM?" I quipped before my brother, an alumnus of one, last year. He cheekily replied, "The strategic use of the word 'It depends'." That was my introduction to the revered business schools of this country. On a serious note, he detailed a few benefits that I would amass enroutè my journey. I write this story detailing how truthful that advice turned out for me in the past one year since I joined IIM Udaipur.
A while ago, I was sitting at the popular peace point/suicide point of my college (IIMK) and was contemplating the future. I was imagining what it would be like, ten years from now in terms of my career, my personal life and then, I looked around myself and started imagining what the institute would become in another ten years. Will it reach altogether a new pinnacle and achieve a glory un-paralleled in its history or will it just fade away as one of the many IIMs in the country? Taking my thoughts further in this direction, I began my quest on a journey to quench myself with an answer for this puzzle eluding me.
