IRONY PERSONIFIED!

When I was learning alphabets in upper KG, little did I know that some pairs of these letters would actually haunt me in the years to come. DI,PS,LR,RC,CR(wow! A mirror reflection),SC.DS….While some MBA aspirants would empathize with me, others might find these letters innocuous . Ideally, these are the constant demons lurking in an MBA aspirant’s mind.

On an average, it takes at least 3-4 attempts at CAT and other MBA entrances to get an admit in the most prestigious B-Schools in India. Such is the dramatic effect of something called “RESERVATION” on the statistics.You would actually come across posts on PAGALGUY- “I have 78.8 percentile,category- SC and have received a call from IIM C..what are my chances??”.While some might be genuine cases requiring an actual  reservation, others could leave a 98.3 percentiler’s  blood boiling.

And for those who are wondering what PAGALGUY is:, it is a consortium where all MBA aspirants converge. An awesome forum with innovative smileys including a “DEVDAS” smiley (to emote depression) and a “BALLE BALLE” smiley (sign of extreme happiness). This forum would be drab and boring you think…well no way…it encompasses it all…-  discussions,debates,fights,opinions,controversies…It could actually serve as an undiluted entertainment for hours..Ever bored in office?you could visit this forum and with a probability close to unity,you’d find another MBA aspirant sharing your profile,problems,emotions and even scores!I am not really marketing for PAGALGUY here but it is definitely one innovative venture which many of my fellow MBA aspirants will agree.

Talking about marketing, the strategies used by coaching institutes deserves a mention.As if  the competition faced in the entrance exams were not enough, the aspirant gets trapped in the competition between different coaching institutes .Each coaching institute claims itself as the best and provides a history of statistics to further confuse the student!.Some of the marketing strategies really hit the weak point of the students-“ the quant section is just high school maths”, ”solve problems without calculation”..blah blah…So at the end of it all ..the student plays a gamble and shells out 5 percent of his salary to their account! Soon it wouldn’t be surprising to find an institute emerge in order to guide students in selecting  the coaching institutes best suited for  them(people taking this idea..please pay me royalty!:))

So after sacrificing many weekends, a lot of fun and of course the 5% salary gamble and hoping that all the positive energies in the universe are working for you, you  endure the series of exams and  enter level two of the game- the interviews! Now the crux of the interview revolves around one question “WHY MBA”.So basically, the 2 letter demons mentioned above have changed avatars  to become two words. Then starts the process of customizing answers with heavy words- passion,entrepreneurship,business acumen..blah blah..Now the underlying truth(barring some exceptions) is that most guys do it to capture a high value in the bride-groom market (with an MBA tag) while girls do it to pacify their feminist instincts("If boys can do ti so can we”) and of course not to mention ,all aspirants eye the sky rocketing monetary benefits post MBA. This is followed by a series of exchanges of text msgs/emails among peers citing a selection or rejection at particular B-schools.To top it all,the T9 dictionary of our mobiles spells out selected and rejected with the same keys adding an element of inconspicuous trauma.

Now at the end of this entire successful/unsuccessful journey, you have practically hard wired a calculator in your brain(QUANT),developed decision making skills to some extent(if you have prepared for XAT),learnt to adapt different strategies(given the number of exams lined up),trained yourself to talk incessantly(thanks to an amazing vocab and superb English with grammar!!),understood consumer psychology(being the target of coaching institutes),trained in articulating something from nothing(answers to “WHY MBA”) and finally you have actually accustomed to unforeseen situations and adapted accordingly(given the capricious whims of IIMs and changing CAT patterns)…….

Hey wait..aren’t these some of the key attributes developed through an MBA??....so now the irony strikes and you’d often wonder “DO I REALLY NEED AN MBA?”