Reply from WIMWI passout on my queries

I have put this mail up here to the benefit of all. Standard disclaimers apply. Edited it to correct spelling mistakes and to make it more readable. Its not that this mail made me join A. I also edited it to remove certain very minor comparisons with other B Schools and have the part which only talks about IIMA.

I am posting it as a for-your-information-only. Hope it benefits few.

QUOTE:

Expectations out of MBA:

- Learning general biz stuff will happen in both A&B. However A has some fantastic electives in both finance and strategy and you can rest assured that you will have ample choice.

- Sitting in classes of superb profs in my view is the biggest strength of A. If someone asks me why is A so different from others enjoying such a brand value, I always say its because of the profs. I have never witnessed such genius personalities and trust me, You will enjoy the aura of intellect thoroughly in the classes. All brand value, placements, rankings...all of these are after effects.....the foundation is that A has some excellent profs in all fields who will simply blow you away with their expereience and depth of knowledge. Prof Ajay Pandey, prof Seb Morris, Prof Abraham Koshy, are just few examples u can search on the net about !

- Good CGPA.....IIMA is absolutely the place to come if u are interested in academics. Period. Acads is clearly the first preference here and everything else depends on student's enthu. You can do everything else as well but thats only after acads. The peers r simply brilliant here and hence the level of competition is absolutely unimaginable. But that inspires you to study harder and get good grades. Little bit of RG and all happens but that happens everywhere n you can't run away from that. In fact its good coz u will face such pressures in work as well n hence this is a great dress rehearsal ! IIMA is also known as IIM Acads. And if u have a good CGPA, well you are the bond then :)

- Get a good job---well, I need not say anything here. The variety is immense. You can check our placement report I posted on PG. Don't even waste a second having doubts on placements. It can get better than this place. Period.

- Learn 1-2 games/sports : Even though IIMA is lot about acads, the best thing is that the opportunities to do whatever u want to are infinite. Its all about managing your time. We have about 40 odd clubs ranging from lits to sports to bike riding to movies :) And trust me , we all do everything along with studies. It just makes u an all rounder :) Frisbee, Cricket, Badminton, TT, Football, Volleyball....All are extremely popular sports here....We even got a foosball table this year :) U can learn whatever sports you want :)

- Peer n/w : The junta in IIMA is the top cream of the country. The amount of intellect around you is mind blowing. And hence you need not bother at all about the peer n/w.

- Work Ex/Mature junta : See, in every institute, u will have a bunch of guys who just wanna pass 2 yrs, and get a good job and then there will always be those who are here for learning and chose courses seriously to gain the max out of the place. And finally there are those who want to do both. I was in the last category :) So the thing is that its completely up to what you want out of the place. You can take all fundoo subjects and you will get good junta to support you and have some intelligent discussions with u and if you get tired u can chose some easy subject to relax. The onus is fully on you. You will always find a sect who will be there to take and learn good course. So don't have any doubts on that.

As far as work ex is concerned I can tell you that the %age of work ex people is steadily on the rise in A and my junior batch has much more work ex people than my batch. Plus I have learnt that its not always true that higher no. of work ex guys implies higher level of intellect n maturity in discussions.

So don't go so much on the figures of no of work ex guys. The quality of work ex guys is more important and thats where IIMA scores above all instis.

Doubts about IIMA :

- Balance in both years -----Thats the biggest misconception people have. See, the thing is that since the first year is so grueling, that many people want to chillax in 2 year which u can afford coz theres no compulsion in the subjects u chose. However, that does not imply that u cant chose good subjects in 2 year and study with the same tempo in 2 year. I have known people who took equally demanding but good subjects in 2 year as well :)

Its simple - Its fully upto you. Both years can be academically demanding or 2nd year can be chill. Its completely a personal preference. Insti allows you to do both. And u should'nt worry at all !

- Profiling - As i said earlier, don't go on sheer nos. See the quality as well. Trust me, you will find the best of minds and personalities in A. And forget just acads, there are all rounders galore here.You will find swimming champs, national tennis players, Music band members, professional singers, professional bikers, debaters...you name it you got it ! Every guy in IIMA has a special talent apart from acads and am not kidding ! What more do u want in terms of learning environment !! Its all upto you how you harness the environment to gain max benefit.

Overall, whatever said and done IIMA's brand value is impossible to match and that brand value is the result of quality of faculty and students. Hence I would strongly recommend you to shed all inhibitions coz none of them hold good from my 2 yrs at IIMA and 2 yrs before that in preparing and comparing B Schools extensively :)

Congrats for your achievement and I hope you don't make the mistake of rejecting A for the doubts you had mentioned because they don't hold much water when you see how IIMA is in 2 years :)

Lemme know if I can be of any other help !

Hope to se ya in IIMA sometime in the next 2 years if I do make a visit :)

All the best !

UNQUOTE

Query in IIMA Yahoo thread :P

Junior:

> Q. Is grass available in IIMA ?
>
> P.S. I dont smoke :D

Reply from Senior:

I hope you don't graze either. :-P

Once in 10 years change of Syllabi at IIMA

AHMEDABAD: It's one big change effected once in a decade at the country's premier management institute. Now, even the first year students of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA)'s flagship post graduate programme in management (PGPM) will have to go
through an internship, and with a difference.

Unlike the usual eight-week internship with corporate houses that the students have to undergo at the end of third term, the new syllabus will ask students to take up a two-week internship with social organisations.

Among other things, the new syllabus will put extra stress on teaching business ethics and technological aspects of businesses. Ethics, business taxation, organisational leadership module and internet technology are the four new topics that the first year students are likely to study from this academic year, said chairperson, PGPM, Ajay Pandey.

The recommendations are on the agenda of the PGP review committee revising the IIM-A's syllabus to be introduced from this academic year. The exercise is taken up once in ten years to make syllabus relevant to contemporary scenario.

In order to highlight the need for coporates' social responsibility, the committee feels that students be given an option to join a social organisation for internship in their first year. However, students not interested in joining social organisations may opt for writing a case
study as an option.

"We bring about some changes in syllabus every year in consultation with area experts based on developments in the field. However, the exercise we are undertaking this year is once-in-a-decade where curriculum across all areas are changed to make it more contemporary
to new developments. While we have decided to drop topics that don't hold much relevance,
we have introduced several new topics. We are also discussing to introduce social internship and case writing as options," said Mr Pandey.

After introducing new syllabus from this academic year, the review committee will work on changing final year course. "However, we have decided to do away with compulsory topics in the second year as well. Now, students will be given the freedom to choose from the electives.
This will be introduced from the next academic year," said Mr Pandey.

Students take up summer internship after completing their first year. IIM-A syllabus usually sets benchmark for other B-schools in the country to follow.

Regarding Social Internship:

I feel its a good move. SPJAIN is already doing it. They don't have summer internships but autumn internships. During summers they do something similar. But I believe Summers must be for summer internship and the autumn period can be used for this CSR internship since then they can meet junta from other B Schools during internship and also it will be inline with the company schedule.

Regarding course change:

I am pretty excited. There will be an air of dynamism due to this course change. We would be the first batch to sit thru this changed course. I hope they have added some really interesting electives. But "Ethics, business taxation, organisational leadership module and internet technology" courses don't seem very exciting. I hope there are others too. I also hope they don't remove those old courses which are legendary in their own way.

Expectations out of an MBA

- Learn general business stuff pretty well. I want to learn more on the overall functioning of business and not specifically specialize only in one subject. Though will take quite some electives in finance and strategy. I plan to take atleast one electives in each area.

- Sit in the classes of superb profs and enjoy the classes. I would never get such a chance again and did not get such an opportunity even at NIT Trichy (except for classes of Dr Karuppan Chetty and Dr Subbiah who were god level at NIT Trichy. Unfortunately both retired recently.)

- Good CGPA (I don't have any worthwhile academic achievement till date. Thought this is good time to try my hands on studies.)

- Get a good job. Preferably IBD (M&A) or MC. Not interested in IB-markets/structuring/Fixed Income etc and not interested in Sales and Marketing/Systems as of now.

- Learn 1-2 games/sports

- Develop a very good peer network

- Hopefully sit in a mature class with junta having good work exp and people who have fair ideas of what they want out of the course.

- Healthy competition amongst junta and not get into RGing and related stuff.

Not so interested in spending lot of my time on:

- Culturals and stuff
- Lits and stuff

Some logic behind above is I am trying to do all that which I did not do well during Engineering days. I was involved a lot in extra currics then and never bothered much about acads. I want to reverse that here.

These are my basic expectations before knowing what opportunities IIM A has to offer. Lets see how things move on. I will re asses these as and when required.

Converted IIMA

I was wait listed at IIM A initially which got converted a week back. I was in some dilemma between A vs B. Some may ask why? As such, if one looks at just the brand, there is obviously no doubt that A is far ahead in it. But in terms of the 2 years which I will spend in the B School both offers its own advantages and disadvantages. I was also senti on IIM B since many friends are in Bangalore and Bangalore is much more happening etc. But thought these must not be a strong criteria to select a B School. Finally decided to join IIM A.

The reporting date is June 23rd. I will be leaving sometime on June 20th/21st.

The "ennakku mattum enda figure'ey matta mateengudhu" syndrome

I had received this forward long time back. Its a wonderful forward created by some genius and meant only for a niche audience/makkal.. ;)

Its why "certain" types never get a girl. :P

Oh, before you start thinking, its not just another educational article swiped from TOI (which, usually, talks of six pack abs, 8 figure salaries, 9 bed room house and 10 course dinners as the "bare minimum" necessities to date a decent girl.)

Anyway, here it goes.

· You always sit in the last bench with the other class comrades who feel that its possible to get marks sitting in last row. In case of workplace, no girls are there in your project and you have like minded ppl like you as colleagues and wherein your entertainment oscillates between
the bars and cinema theaters.

· You cant sing a Bryan Adams, Sting, George Michael's song. When someone talks about Linkin Park, you cannot even imagine who they are and the closest link you can associate with them is Cubbon Park.

· You perceive discotheque to be a place where you will have a chance to unleash your dancing potential (dappankuthu) and occupy the center stage with 10 other fellow rogues, immediately throwing out the babes from the vicinity of the dance floor. This automatically repels the
women from you (they consider you as out of civilization. But, unfortunately we think that we are the only ppl who can really dance)

· You cant eat Spanish, Chinese foods and your fav restaurant invariably happens to be Vasantha Bhavan, Anandha Bhavan, Shanthi-Sagar, types . Of coz we cant forget Karpagam Mess, Mami's kadai and Murugan Idly and max Anjappar, Ponnusaamy. We frankly are clueless as to what are Bella Ciao, Wang's kitchen and things like that, unless we happen to go an a treat organised by the other guyz.

· You dont see a reason why you have to go to Barristas or Qwiky's when the local corner "Nair Kadai Chaaya" tastes like nectar and satisfies you more than a Barristas. Lime tea is the best tea to have been invented by an human and you are thankful to nair for providing it to you.

· Most of the jokes you know are adult jokes which you can discuss only with your other fellow comrades and which again takes the oppurtunity from telling a joke to the girl and impressing her. But when you seriously tell very good jokes, the blondes can't comprehend. You have to tell some absolutely "Kadi jokes" (terrible bores) to make them laugh, which you try however, will never come close to.

· You obviously dont know how to make use of Yahoo Messenger, and you use it to scold your online friends with the best choice of invectives, spread rumours abt other guyz, and ask them to book the latest movie tickets. You unfortunately dont know how to flirt using Yahoo Messenger and are frequently at loss of topics when you want to chat with some girl. Whereas you are deluged with strange topics to discuss with your friend with whom you had lost touch for the past decade or so.

· While chatting in messenger, you seriously cant start a topic with a member of the oppoisite sex. I have seen guyz chatting with girls purely with emoticons for more than a hour. You can never do that. You will have to crack real dumb jokes to start the conversation or falsely extol
them. And bet, you can't do the following:

Boy : What did you have for breakfast??
Girl : I had idli ....
Boy: Is it??? Same pinch, no back pinch, I too had idli. (he slyly pinches her) and laughs.
Girl : Ouchhh (artificially). It hurts.
Boy: Ohh.. I am sorry and (tries to apologise).............then says "I had sambhar for idli."
Girl: (excitedly)..Sambharrrrrrrr............ i had chutney....and giggles...

I swear, I cant tolerate any longer than this................ And this is not a figment of imagination, by any means. I have seen this...Though I agree there may be exceptions..

· You seriously are clueless as to what rock music is.

· All through college life, you belong to this boyz gang and even in your gang, nobody has a girlfriend. So there is absolutely an absence of the inspirational factor.


ROTFL :)

Wondering...

There is one thing about me which I don't understand.

I had this innate love for competitive exams. Right from the JEE, TNPCEE days to the CAT ones.
But I never used to put the same efforts once I got into an insti after cracking the exam. Actually speaking, "never" is a strong word since I have actually experienced it only once and that was at NITT. But I developed the same feeling about my next 2 yrs at IIM B too.

Why should I feel so motivated to get into an institution but not motivated enough to put in hard work there?

Hmmm.. I think I know the answer.

A complicated world

I started reading a e-book called God's Debris by Scott Adams of Dilbert fame. Know more about it here.

Read this in the first few pages.

Quote:

My solution was to create smart-sounding answers using the skeptic’s creed:

The simplest explanation is usually right.

My experience tells me that in this complicated world the simplest explanation is usually dead wrong. But I’ve noticed that the simplest explanation usually sounds right and is far more convincing than any complicated explanation could hope to be. That’s good enough for my purposes here.

Unquote:

I sometimes thought simplification is very good in this complicated world. I am not sure how I developed that thought. To a certain extent it was because of the awe I had on people who could explain complicated concepts in a simple way. But I feel I did not understand many concepts in detail and in depth due to oversimplification of the concept. I guess there is a thin line of difference in explaining things "simply" and "extremely simply".

I was wondering why I had the urge to oversimplify certain concepts. The above quote in blue answered it.

Bias

I was thinking about the kind of biases we have against certain things.

1. Intelligence - A measure of how sharp a person's thinking is
2. Maturity level (Attitude in general) - A measure of how evolved, tolerant, understanding etc one is
3. Experience/Age/Work exp etc - Age or no. of years working in some organization etc

Bias 1: We assume at times that Intelligence ensures Good attitude, maturity etc

This bias started with the "Ramu is a very good boy. He always gets first rank in the class" dialogue, which used to be dropped whenever a group of middle aged junta (mostly the moms) interact.

This bias gets inbuilt and I would go as far as to say that majority of decisions made to select someone for something in the corporate world do not consider attitude/maturity level at all. Its assumed that it would be in place.

I am surprised that when my dad sent a mail to all his friends that I got admits from BLIK, so many assumed and wrote how perfect an attitude I must have or similar things like that. They did not even know me and some were hearing about me for the first time!

Bias 2: We assume at times that age or amount of experience ensures some level of maturity

I was affected by this bias. I thought that if someone joins an MBA with maybe 2-3 years of experience, he "must" be mature. Though these days I have corrected it to "he must have got an opportunity to become more mature", which I feel is right.

Why this blog?

I have been reading certain mails from people who seem to have excellent credentials, very intelligent and what not. But the mails and the thoughts in the same are so immature and they highlight an extremely offensive attitude with dollops of ego. I am frankly surprised. I somehow unconsciously have been biased, probably because of my upbringing or whatever. I am learning slowly.

That way, I should definitely say, I have been extremely lucky during my engineering days to have got the chance to interact with extra-ordinarily talented people who were down to earth, humble, mature and with the right attitude.

NIT Trichy 2001-05 : What did I gain?

I was just wondering today about the things which come to the top of my mind when I think of my 4 years at NIT Trichy and what did I gain. out of those 4 years.

1st year:

- I went to NITT along with 6 guys whom I knew before and we formed a gang there and had nice time ottifying each other and also others. Some of us were pretty merciless when it came to ottifying others. ;) [ottifying = pulling others leg]

- A lot of my nights was spent on 2nd time JEE preps with a very close friend, Madhu.

- I did not find any class interesting in first year. Not that I found classes interesting rest of the years. ;)

- I was from Chennai and we guys were considered to be "scene parties" by the other junta from places like madurai, tirunelveli and stuff. Even though we were the "local types" from Chennai. Not the DAV educated, Vidya mandir graduated, Bon jovi watching, engleesh speaking types. The best engleesh music anyone would have heard in our gang was "backstreet boys" . That too because every year in our school the dance junta used to dance for that "everybodyaaaaaaaaaaa" song for annual day.

- I hardly studied and somehow did not have the motivation to get a good CGPA. I remember Deepak/CD got 9.85/10 in the first sem and was highest in our chennai gang and somewhere near the top 3 in the college. Amongst the Chennai junta, in that sem, 9 was a low score! Almost all had 8.5+.

I scored a 7.85 :)

- I unfortunately did not feel bad about it. Maybe I thought I would crack the JEE anyway. Actually if i remember right, I felt that these exams were crap of the highest order. Too much to mug and a high score did not mean you were intelligent. I had no motivation. I just took maths as a challenge and scored a S. I scored S, A, B, C,D and left only E and F in the first sem.

- I nor Madhu cracked JEE finally. We both screwed it up.

- I used to attend the ragging sessions and became very close with the seniors. To some extent because I was one among the elite few who could "speak and describe things well" and matched the wavelength of some seniors. Badri and Hari were other two who were PhD's in the "necessary" stuff. :P

- We had many pazham's from Chennai. The fun part is many seniors were also Pazham's but acted like "kewl dudes". The ragging sessions were major fun.

Verdict at end of year 1: Great friends. Was enjoying life to the core. Sad that I did not crack JEE. Thought need to concentrate on grades from year 2.

Year 2:

- Made a new set of friends in year 2, mainly because of room allocation going haywire. Pretty unfortunate since I took the lead in 1st year to see to it that our gang all were together!

- Became close friends with a new gang of Trichy Day scholars.

- Out of the 4 years, 2nd year was "THE" year for me.

- We formed a film gang. Me, Krishna and Siva used to watch a hell lot of films. We were regulars. Many others also used to join us. I remember that we watched 32 films in Trichy theatres that year. Trichy theatres rock to the core. At 30-50 bucks, a decent film and the traditional dinner at Sangeetha's. That was life.

- I did not find any of the classes challenging. I wanted to maintain a 8+ GPA and that mattered to me. So, worked hard enough during exam nights to crack a 8+. Madhu was the guy to be with during exams. :)

still to be updated..

2nd year takeaways : Films, new

Milagrow meet and about my friends

I had gone back to my office today to give sweets for getting into an MBA program. All were very happy and congratulated me. Felt happy. :)

Milagrow has played a really important role in my life. I did some really interesting work there and it was a exciting time. But frustrating too since work pressure was too high. :P

However this post is more about 2 close friends I got at Milagrow. Not necessarily close in no. of years we knew each other or the extent to which we spoke with each other. But we got along really well. I did not get a chance to interact with really smart and passionate people in L&T. Most had the "chalega yaar" attitude. These 2 were different. They were very smart, down to earth, had great pedigrees, intelligent and more importantly damn passionate in doing something different, something exciting. One of them was from IIT Kanpur and the other from IIT Madras. All were 2005 batch passouts. What was different was, they were not interested in doing an MBA. They were not interested in MS etc. They wanted to start something on their own in a non IT field and were getting damn passionate about it. They may start it anytime. I like the fact that they are not in the rat race. Not because they feel its too tiresome (thats the thought many normal engineering types may have) but because they feel they are destined to do bigger things. Flying in business class does not seem to excite them much. They want to go out and create a big businesses.

I will wait to see what happens. I am really happy to have got 2 such friends. :)

Good news. Joining IIM B as of now :)

Life is funny. When I prepared last year like crazy, I did not get a single call from the IIMs for interviews. I had final admits from SPJAIN Marketing, NITIE and IIT Delhi and a Waitlist from XLRI BM which never converted. I had almost decided to join SPJAIN. But then, got an offer to join a good firm and also I was not so sure whether I wanted to do Marketing. I would have joined XLRI had it converted. But it did'nt. But all for good only.

This year I appeared for CAT with minimum preparation, but due to luck and God's grace secured all 6 calls. I secured a call from IIM Shillong too though was not ready to join and did not attend the interview. I finally converted BLIK and got Waitlisted at IIM A (no. 31). C did not convert.

The WL at A may not clear. But not sure whether to join A even if it clears. I am postponing the decision hoping it wont convert. :) I like IIM B mainly because its in Bangalore and I have some senti on it.

I like the selection process of IIM B, which is different from others and results in more experienced and a diverse set of people getting through,and I hear from B junta that they are more "pseud" and hence more business like than their counterparts. If I tell I am joining B for the above reasons, I will be acting as if I am rational.

But I hope I get to join IIM B finally. I don't have the mind to reject A for B or B for A. Both are great instis. :)

I am seeing the threads and discussions at the yahoo group. Pretty good discussions.
I participated in few discussions too. But really nice that the 2nd years are taking out time to reply to our queries. Replies are received within 4-5 mts. I guess our batch is slowly picking up. I hoped it would not be a very "senior junior" kind of relationship, the engineering college style. I am also in the yahoo group of an another college where I have been selected. Its primarily the same kinda relationship everywhere. The 2nd years thinking the "1st yr kids" have come and likes. It should slowly shift to the ISB style of interactions which I felt are at a more mature level. Its not do with work ex. Guess its because of the past precedence.

Our batch has considerable no. of people with work ex. I am pretty impressed.

Gut feel from orkut polls tells:

Freshers - must be 23-25%
< 1 yr - 8-10 %
1-2 yr - 33-35%
2-3 yr - 15%
3 yr + - 20%

The above is definitely a very impressive for IIM Bangalore since once upon a time, there used to be figures like 70% freshers in IIMs etc. Lemme see how the figures finally turn out. This is just based on some orkut poll.

But I guess some other IIMs have 50% freshers even this year. It should change slowly. Nothing against freshers, but having work experience helps in gaining some maturity and getting a feel of the real world outside, especially for a course like MBA. Anyway, that will be a different post altogether. Will post my views on that too. :)

You can expect this blog to be some sort of a chronicle of real life at IIM B. I hope I do not fall into the bandwagon of "My school is best" or the "B is B" kinda crap which is liberally doled out these days by many students. I hope to post my perspectives about things as they happen here and hence would be useful to future students interested in joining IIM B or any IIM.