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

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.

CAT

Its official. CAT is fun.

Simcat 12

Reached half an hour late. I wished we had skipped it. Could have been a good one if we weren’t late. Always hope.

Simcat 11 results

The results are here. They are bad. But surprisingly, put relatively they are not that bad.

Simcat 11 Results

Simcat 11

Another Simcat, another disaster.

A measely 5 in quant. rest were ok though. No hopes.

Simcat 10 Results

Here comes the Simcat 10 results, as expected I don’t clear the cutoffs.

Simcat 10 Results

Next week is a break and after that we have tests every weekend till the CAT. Lets see what happens.

Simcat 10

A low after the high. Yes I did it again. Looks like a pretty bad test after seeing some comments and scores. Didn’t feel so bad when I was doing the paper. Just had the feeling that I lost time in the starting 30 minutes. Maybe thats what did me in. The last Sunday break coming up next weekend. Hope to have improved performances from then on. Also need to be on the lookout for SNAP forms. This is a good time to be doing MBA or maybe not. You don’t know whether the markets would have improved in the two years from now or not, but this gives you a argument that conditions like this make the requirement of management skills in all the employees mandatory and those with the edge will do better and help their companies do better.

And yes it now seems I love this journey more than the destination. I don’t want to.