During my two years of MBA,I always felt that one needs some considerable amount of time for self-introspection and to be in total control of the situation but MBA doesn't gives you that privilege. Now time has taken a complete U turn.MBA is over and you are grappling to find something worthwhile to do at home. I do realize that it’s going to be the last "long" vacation of my life. One has plenty of time to look back in time and understand what MBA was all about!
In this post I would only look at the academic part.
Before joining a Business school, the three most important parameters for any aspirant for judging a B-school is
- Placements
- Industry Interface
- Faculty
Almost all B-school rankings are a mere mockery and are in some way "paid listings" just like the paid ads that you see in the Google search page.
Every aspirant craves for loads of industry interface but when on campus, he’s bogged down by the sheer quantum of alumni talks and other CEO talks held in campus.
Before joining a B-school, every guy who thinks he has some grey cells aspires to be an i-banker and makes up his mind of majoring in finance. In the very first term with much fanfare people register for CFA exams. Registration for CFA exams is a sure shot way to be christened as a "fin stud". The fear of failure for some make them go underground and register for it secretly, fearing that they might lose their reputation if they fail, as if they have lot of it!
But only a couple of terms are enough to hook people back to the ground. Floundering grades and diffidence gets people on dusty ground. CQPI maximization becomes the only goal in life. People take up subjects to maximize grades even if they have no interest in those and learning is almost zero!
As a rule of thumb, be it engineering or MBA, always the sub-standard faculty bestow lavish grades for hiding their incompetence and winning the confidence of the students. Students give them good feedback in return for generous grades and the incompetent faculty survives at the institute with ease. This is a huge lacuna in our education system.
Whether grades are important or not in B-schools is a million dollar question. Seniors drum it into your heads that running after grades is a waste of time and extracurricular is what matters. Summer placements are like a trailer of final placements. After summer placements and having more information of final placements, somewhere in term -3, most of the students are stupefied to know that grades does matter in short listing. They start to panic, curse their seniors and take up papers which are of no value other to maximize grades! In final placements, apart from a couple of firms, none of the others shortlists only on the basis of grades. Your class-10, 12 and engg. Academics matter much more! Situation in top 5-6 campuses might be different where management consulting and i-banks come for recruitment, which categorically looks for the toppers.
Some of the firms even go for random short listing. Even a guy in bottom 5-6 percentile of his batch and no great pre-MBA academic record or pedigree finds his resume shortlisted and a guy from a top notch engineering college with an enviable pre-MBA academic record and work-ex is shunted from further evaluation. This might be boon for many but definitely not a scientific way of selection!
In placements anything can happen. Toppers' dreams might be put to dust while the underdogs might walk away with the most coveted jobs on campus. I believe placements are not completely in your hands but what you learn in 2 years is something on which you have control. So, the focus should be on learning. After all we are in a knowledge industry and we are paid commensurate to the skill set that we have!
Getting placed in a big brand with differential profile and pay is worse than getting into a not so exclusive brand company which treats you in league 1.It's the nature of work that you do that matters and not the company for which you work for.
If you track the career of any of your former classmates or any other acquaintance from a premier institute, you would find most of them end up fighting their way to the top. Campus placements are just a launch platform. One has got the maximum bang for his bucks only he has maximized his learning.
