Clash of IIM’s

Two of the IIM’s vying for me to such an extent that they have scheduled interviews on the same day, same location and all. Indore gets a headstart of 1 hour starting from 8:30 AM.

Couldn’t these institutes get together and come up with a solution that will prevent these things. With the IIM’s declaring that they will go online from next year, couldn’t they use some of the IT infrastructure that would be coming into place to manage a small thing as this. And I am not alone. Very many people have got clashing schedules this year. I might be the only one who won’t try for a change. I might just get lucky and manage to attend both at the cost of one this way. The administration process as a whole is ridiculous but they get away with it because there are about 300,000 people trying to get into those institutes, or at least filling the forms every year. Can’t they have a common interview panel and a defined set of criteria to choose students. But I guess they dont have to try because the numbers are in their favor. Also the way they pick students, they are already picking those that will succeed. I mean if they hold the admission and convocation together, it won’t make much difference to either the people going in or the companies recruiting they. They just intend to give them a free and cozy place to stay for a couple of years so that they can extract their pound of flesh later. Or maybe they do add some value and the day I realize that will be the day I start preparing for the interviews in earnest.

Just saw their schedules today. See for youself.

Indore Interview schedule

Calcutta Interview schedule

Sudoku

Sudoku is a logic-based number placement puzzle. The objective of the puzzle is to fill a 9×9 grid so that each rows, columns and 3×3 grids have numbers from 1 to 9. Initially given a partially filled grid you have to use logic to complete the puzzle.
The puzzles owe their popularity in modern times to the ability of software applications to quickly generate puzzles and check the solution for correctness.
I like them because they force you to think and look for all the possibilities.

Currently it is my 9-5 job. I go to office and spend a majority of time solving them on www.websudoku.com

Annual Ritual

The annual ritual in question is CAT. I have been filling the form for the last four years. The sequence of events is mostly the same. Fill the form at the last moment. Somewhere between the exam and form filling, I find myself very serious but that last for only a bout a week and I fill no other forms. Then the exams come. After going through the exams I relax a bit. This is the best part of the ritual. I love these exams. The whole exam process, coaching coming out with different solutions and the stuff. One things to note is I am always relaxed during this part of the process. Now comes the scary parts. Yeah, you guessed it right. The results. I panic after the results. No not  because I have done bad, but because I have done rather well and have ended up with the dreaded calls. Now the same agonizing cycle. Reaching the interviews highly unprepared and flunking up all chances. Bunking interviews has also happened.

Now the thing wrong with this is that the circle should start earlier. I am not starving so I have  the luxury of thinking whether I want to do the MBA or not. If yes, from what all places. If having fun for 2 more years is the idea, why not in Europe or somewhere good. What good is doing MBA from India. Not that I might not have fun in Indian colleges but do I really want to do an MBA that badly. What I mean by the circle starting earlier  (if only a circle could start earlier), is that I should evaluate completely whether I want to do an MBA at all or it is just some seasonal hormones which push me to fill the forms and waste 1200 bucks at least and plenty of other things. Like this year, I missed the trip to Goa for which we were preparing so much.

Why MBA?

The MBA quest of mine has been in existence since 2006, the year I graduated and also appeared for CAT for the first time. I had one call them from IIM K because of a disastrous performance in Quant where I scored 82%ile while the overall score was 99.45%ile. From then on till date, I have got 13 IIM GD/PI calls including 5 for the current year. The distribution has been :

• 2006      99.45     K
• 2007      99.60     ACKLI
• 2008      99.20     KC
• 2009      99.96     BCLKI

And still here I am. I am slowly coming to realize that instead of trying to run the ‘rat race’ of getting into am MBA course, maybe I should realize that its not for me and drop the plan. Yes this has been  prompted by my recent most GD/PI experience and may be this is my way of running away from this thing. But how many times I am supposed to take this. A GD in which I cannot speak and then an interview in which I always start from the handicap of doing bad in GD or having a bad and coming down CPI during graduation and my lack of confidence and a host of other reasons. Its all in the mind by the way. What I also see is I don’t have the drive or desperation I have seen in some other people preparing for this interview and this also puts me on the backfoot. Filling forms the night before the interviews is not going to take me too far. Maybe the time has come to bring an end to this annual ritual.

Life as such is not bad for me as yet. I have a job I hope I am doing good in and can continue to do good in. I haven’t yet burned out from the technical work. I have a nice life out of office with some good flat mates and plenty of avenues to enjoy life as such. The one missing element well seems likely to remain missing for some more time to come.

IIM K : Form Answers

Describe briefly your current or most recent job responsibilities. State the knowledge and skills you have acquired from this experience.

I have worked as a web application developer for the last 2.5 years. Currently I am in the MnO team at Atos Origin. This position has enabled me to learn to respond fast, interact with clients and work on the whole product because we keep getting enhancements from all parts of the project and we are expected to deliver them quickly. I was able to get a complete understanding of the project very soon and that has enabled me to be productive as well has elevated me to a team lead role where in I guide other members of my team.

Why do you wish to go for a management career?

I was part of a startup and we failed to keep it going. That was where I started thinking about doing an MBA seriously. That experience showed me that you need a complete understanding of business side of things as well as a good grasp on technological aspects. So to build on to technical skills I have acquired during 2.5 years of my work in technical domain, I now want to do an MBA to get an understanding of the business aspects of the thing so that I can take up more responsible roles in any organization.

What alternative careers are you considering and why?

As I see MBA as a natural progression in my quest to get a better role in IT field, the alternative I have thought is continuing to work in my current role and in the meanwhile expanding my knowledge of technology as well as project management so that I could progress on to roles of more responsibility and importance. I would try to get in a development project as a team leader so that I could build my people skills as well.

Describe your strengths and weaknesses as identified by you.

I am able to delegate work efficiently and stay calm under pressure. This enables me to get more work done.

I am an introvert by nature and this has hindered me at times.

What is your most significant accomplishment so far?

I consider clearing IIT-JEE with a rank of 2354 and getting into IIT Kanpur my most significant achievement so far.
I have written this here in hopes that someone will provide comments to make them better or it will be useful for me for filling out the next set of forms.  I will also try to post answers to other questions and some follow up questions on this.

Indian Culture

We started off by discussing the Indian music and the award won by it including the latest by A. R. Rahman. Then we went on to the fact that India is one of the oldest civilizations in world and that we had a planned city in Indus Valley civilization in existence much before others. India has made contributions to medical science (charak samhita), to mathematics (zero) and to trade in the ancient times. Also how we had Vedas and other ancient text which are a repository of lot of knowledge. Also culturally we were also good, in architecture as show by Khajuraho, Ajanta, Ellora etc. The Gupta dynasty has also sent naval armies to fight the sea pirates active in the current Indonesian region. Then came the point where we talked about how we fell from grace and came to be what we are now. Then we came onto why every country is promoting its own language and culture and why are we running after English. We discussed the benefits of promoting English versus promoting Hindi and the difficulties posed by both.

The benefits of English are:

1)      Ability to do business with the world which has enabled our growth up to this point

2)      Easy access to all the technological and other developments across world most of which is in English or is available readily translated in English.

The benefits of Hindi are:

1)      Encouraging our own culture

2)      Inclusion of rural populace in the mainstream of development

The difficulties in promoting English are that a huge percentage of our population has no access to ways to learn English and join the mainstream where good paying job and avenues of development are available. The difficulty in promoting Hindi is that a huge amount of investment will be required by way of translation of lots of stuff into Hindi as well as the fact that India doesn’t have a common language. We will need to undertake this activity in all the major languages of India. And corporate won’t take this up as it doesn’t make much business sense of them and the kind of inefficiency and lethargy Indian government has shown in its working it can’t be expected to take this up and complete this successfully.

One good point for vernacular languages is that once the benefits of development reach the masses of India, Indian companies will have to cater to them in vernaculars which will lead to their development. But somewhere this is a circular path and we don’t see the circle starting anytime soon. Maybe what the government can do is enable both the options and let people be their own judge. English can be a driver of growth but only for so much time as
export led growth cannot really work unless there is domestic demand. The sustained development for an economy can come only from internal demand. Exports can help for some time but in the end they should be a means to achieve development for all. An example was cited of the telecom companies having call centers catering
to the vernacular speaking population. Also if the services are to be made available to rural populace, it will have to in a language that they are comfortable in rather than one that is imposed on them.

Hence finally it should be left to people to decide for themselves. The government should work to make both the options viable but let people choose for themselves but they must have that choice and equal opportunities in both.

And Federer does it again.

My 100% record of getting Roger Federer defeated in a Grand Slam continues. It started with the 2005 Australian Open semi-final with Marat Safin which Federer lost 5–7, 6–4, 5–7, 7–6(6), 9–7 in over four hours and Safin went on to win the finals too. Then I had a big break and came back to get Federer defeated in the Wimbledon Finals of 2008 at the hands of Rafael Nadal. And again yesterday, Federer lost the Australain open to his nemesis, Rafael Nadal and broke down on court, perhaps believing that he will now not be able to get his now elusive 14th Grand Slam to equal Pete Sampras. I personally believe that getting equal number of slams, even if he gets them which is highly unlikely now, will not make him one of the greatest tennis players of the era as a lot of people keep harping. In his early years, he had a free run at all the non-clay slams which he exploited to his advantage. I don’t say that he shouldn’t have done that but what I don’t understand is why he is considered among the greatest player when he has won his slams in a period of almost no opposition. Whenever he has been stretched, he has lost it and he hasn’t been on many occasions when he was collecting those slams so we should bemoan the lack of quality of Men’s tennis in those years.

Now we have some good players on the scene. Nadal is obviously there and then we have Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray. Also the way Fernando Verdasco played in semis, he showed he can challenge anyone.

So I fail to see how Federer will now get to his 14th Grand Slam now which makes me very happy. Unless all 3 mentioned above are injured, it is going to be very tough for Federer to get a slam now.