Month: June 2020

My MBA Journey: IIM-Visakhapatnam

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The post on the new and baby IIMs was meant to be a sort of reality check for aspirants who have to choose between these schools and others. My intention was not to dissuade anyone from joining but to help them make the right choice when faced with a list of schools to choose from. An alum of IIM-Visakhapatnam and still a regular reader of this blog, Abhishek, commented that the new and baby IIMs were not as bad as the post made them out to be. We got talking and it turns out that since since I had only mentioned established private schools — with schools such as NMIMS and SIBM in mind — it was construed to mean a much longer list. But all is well that ends well and Abhishek has written a piece about his MBA experience from IIM-V And yeah, I will vouch for Vizag (the shorter and more used name), the city I was born and raised in — it has a certain charm to say the least and …

My MBA Journey: IIM L – PGPSM

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It was back in the 2015-16 season if I remember correctly that Sachin first managed to track me down by leaving a comment on my blog. I was handling the IMS business in Chennai, he was a student of IMS based out of Kolkata and he wanted some advice on quitting his job and taking another shot at the CAT. The thing with really mature students is that they need guidance only at a  really broad level, the rest they customize themselves (and there is the blog, anyway) and Sachin is one such individual. He went on to get an admission into the relatively new Sustainability Management Program launched by IIM-L. Since then he has been doing quite well and has even played a part in helping an administration out during the current crisis. If you read his post you will find he had all the ingredients that a student joining a new or baby IIM or a new program needs —  this post. Here is his journey in his own words. From back of …

My MBA Journey: IIM-Udaipur

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Give the number of queries I am getting about the new and the baby IIMs, I thought the best way to shed a bit more light on them is to get my students who have gone there to write about their experience. This one is by Siddharth, who is not a student, but was part of the IMS Team in Kochi. So I met him whenever I went down there to take a session, which was usually once a year. Siddharth graduated from IIM-U this year and this is his take about the same. Some of the parts were new to me as well, especially the part about why he chose IIM-U —  I think knowing why you want something, being clear about it, and not trying to invent ten other reasons apart from the sole reason is not a common trait. So here are his two cents on this experience at IIM-U. MBA was a kind of an escape plan for me back in 2017. But it turned out to be the best decision …

Is an MBA in the time of pandemic worth it?

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I know this has been a while coming but to me it made sense get a complete hang of the how the crisis is going to unfold and its implications before venturing an opinion. By now I have received enough and more queries to know what the major & minor concerns and the main decision-making conundrums are. So, let’s jump right in. Placements — It is all about the economy! The first and immediate concern is the summer placements — they usually happen right at the end of the first trimester will that be happening, will they be delayed, or will they not happen at all. Well, they might be delayed a bit for since the start itself has been delayed and whether the quality will suffer or not depends completely on the economy. From all the sources the news in the short-term is not looking good at all. The period from now till mid or late next year is going to be a pretty rough ride. Internationally, another financial sector crisis like the sub-prime …

The New & Baby IIMs?

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It is that time of the year where I keep getting queries around X versus Y versus Z and there are two extremes between which most queries fall I want to give another shot at A-B-C despite having L, XL I am confused between new & baby IIMs and NMIMS/SIBM The hunger for an IIM depicted at both the extreme ends. The first one is a psychological problem for many and a real problem only for a few (if you want to me to write about why A-B-C or nothing is not a great idea at all, then let me know through the comments, and I’ll do a post on the same). The second one is at the other end where the visions of a tag blur every other sense of reality. In this post, I’ll try to go through criteria that you should use while taking a call involving admits from the new and the baby IIMs and other premier schools. But before that a bit of context on two ingredients necessary for a …

My 2 cents from a lifetime experience called MBA

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Over the past few years of mentoring there are always students who keep in touch even after they graduate from b-school. Some to express gratitude once they get their final placement, some to sort out their post MBA dilemmas and others just to have a nice chat about everything under the sun :-). Likewise this year a student of mine wrote to me, just after a graduated, saying that he felt investing in an MBA was the best thing he did and over the course of a few mails I asked him to do a guest post about his MBA experience. Given that a lot of aspirants who made it to b-schools will be debating the pros and cons, thinking about the cost involved whether it is worth it, the better schools you missed out on and stuff, this post is timely. Two years back I remember this student also being in the same dilemma. He was wondering whether it was really worth leaving his job at Ford to do an MBA. I felt he should …

DI-LR: Improving your core strength

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DI-LR, as we know, has been the nemesis of many a CAT aspirant over the past few years, and every serious aspirant asks me that — how do I improve my DI-LR skills. Over the last two years, I thought that it is primarily about two things — set selection and comfort with mathematical reasoning (many sets over the last few years have been based on Arithmetic and Modern Math concepts). But even so, I knew that to select the right sets and then solve 4 sets, one needs to solve the two easiest sets quite fast, and this pace would come from the regular practice of DI-LR sets (irrespective of difficulty level) and Sudoku. Even then I still felt that a lot was left to the “natural” capability of the student. There was nothing concrete I could communicate (apart from a 5-minute average for Medium Sudoku sets) like say a particular reading speed or a particular set of concepts.