MBA is a means to an end, and not an end in itself. The whole point of doing an MBA is to give yourself a better career, isn't it? So with CAT done and dusted, what steps are you taking to move a step closer to your dream career? What is the point of scoring a good percentile and getting into a b-school if you don't know what career path you want to take?
To do or not to do? This is the question that haunts most of the MBA aspirants. Most of the times this could be because of the enormous amount of effort that goes into securing your seat into a dream B-school. But when do you know that doing an MBA and putting in the effort to get that coveted place is actually worth the fight. Read the below chain of thoughts if you still haven’t been decisive enough about this life-changing course and want to know if you fit into it:
Before I start elaborating on the factors that went into deciding which IIM is better, I would like to mention that being a student of IIM Bangalore, it is natural to have a bias towards the institute. However, in this article, I have tried to remain as neutral as possible basing my decision solely on facts.
In the job market, work experience prior to doing an MBA is undervalued as opposed to the work experience after doing an MBA. I will give two scenarios here and compare how work experience prior to doing an MBA is heavily discounted. Consider two students who have completed their undergrad from the same college and graduated in the year 2015. Now one person went on to work for 3 years and after the hikes and promotions managed to get a salary of 10-12 lakhs in 2018, he later decides to join a B-School. Whereas his batchmate went on to do an MBA as a fresher from one of the top B-Schools and now earns a whopping 21 lakh after a year of work experience. This difference is very drastic and even if we consider an investment in management education, the breakeven point is within 2 years. Unless the person who worked for three years was unsure of doing an MBA back in 2015, he/she has worked three extra years at a lower salary than his fellow batchmate to eventually reach the same position that his friend has reached three years before!
CAT, the most important exam for the management aspirants, is a national level examination which happens once a year in November. It is not an exam of intelligence but of aptitude, what this means is that one needs to have skills of selection, pressure handling, and the ability to work harder than others, in addition to knowledge of Quantitative Aptitude, Verbal and Logical Reasoning & Data Interpretation. Every year it receives around two lakhs applications where the final success rate is very low, to say the least.
With the CAT exam being over and other MBA entrance exams queued up, the journey for MBA aspirants doesn’t get over here. Scoring in these competitive exams is the first stepping stone towards the goal of getting into the top B-Schools. Simultaneously, there is the need for the aspirants to start for the preparation of Group Discussions and Personal Interviews (GD/PI) to get admission in a B-School. Working in an IT firm with hectic schedules and many entrance exams for MBA in the queue, my routines were quite frantic. I had not started with preparations of GD/PI until I got a profile-based call from S P Jain, Mumbai. Entering into one of the best B-Schools, that is SPJIMR is a dream come true for an MBA aspirant. The call was made even before the CAT results were out.
The oldest B-School of the country, XLRI has been ranked as one of the best B-Schools of India and ranked first among private B-schools. Renowned for offering an education that encompasses business studies along with a holistic development of students through its vibrant committee culture, social initiatives and projects, it is not for no reason that corporate organizations make a beeline for hiring from XLRI.
Now that CAT 2018 is over, with QA section leaving many people shell-shocked, MBA aspirants would be looking to focus on upcoming entrance exams and/or preparing for interviews and calls. This article is nothing about preparing for what is to come, but more about learning from what you went through during your preparation phase.
