What are some bitter truths about life at the IIMs? This question was asked in Quora. It drew a spate of responses from students, both current and former, revealing a tale of sleep and leisure deprived students rushing about to complete assignments, studies and all the time trying to build a CV to impress recruiters at summer internships and final placements.
All the same, none of them ever wanted to drop out of the course. In fact, some went to the extent of stating that the good outweighs the bad and they were only listing the negatives due to the nature of the question.
The Indian Institute of Management (IIMs) have been not only most sought after by MBA aspirants but also by top companies looking for the best available management executives to fill in key posts.
Sharing his experience, Puneet Manuja says preparing the CV and revising it at least 50 times during the 2-year program is absolutely necessary. Almost 25% of the time during the first two months at IIM was spent in preparing/editing/formatting his one page CV for summer internship.
“You are never allowed to express your own desirable words in your CV, you have to use so-called power verbs. Finally, you get confused on what is written in your resume and apply for your summers. You mess up with your long-term careers goals and blabber some artificially crafted answers in interviews,” he says.
Manuja found it hard to maintain real friendship at IIM as due to pressures over developing networking stressed in all management lessons, one ends up saying hello to every next person in campus.
For summer internships, since the IIM marks cannot be disclosed, the student’s 10/12/college marks are given a lot of weight. Students with low marks in these exams never get a good shortlist.
Students are expected to participate in class discussions, presentations, PPTs, case studies with fancy jargon like sunk cost, value addition, Kotler rules etc. “If you are student who does not participate in discussion just because you did not understand the topic, then IIM is not a right place,” he says.
Students get into comparison mode over marks, salary package and performance. The hectic schedule drain out energy and students should be prepared for abnormal sleeping patterns and unhealthy food habits.
Even after completion of the MBA, the graduate gets saddled with a monthly EMI range of education loans from Rs 25,000 to Rs 40,000. “There is a good probability that your salary increase post IIM is 3X and expense would be 4x or 5x times,” he says.
However, IIM program is still worth the experience as you would be among the best people and get an opportunity to push up intellectual levels and expertise.
Krishna Bharadwaj, PGDM, IIMA (Batch of 2015-17), says that no matter how good you are at studies, IIMA will make you struggle. This is because you are competing with people who have graduated from top institutes in the country. Even if you topped in your IIT in undergrad, chances are that you will be beaten by others in at least a few subjects here.
Students will have to really exert themselves to get CV points by participating in club activities, case competitions and other events that happen in and around campus. The catch here is that not every event gives a CV point, and not every CV point can be used on a single resume. You will have to pick and choose the ones you feel will be best for the company you are applying to, and even then, it remains a guessing game.
Add to this the hectic pace. First term will have innumerable quizzes. Often when you expect a quiz in microeconomics, it would turn out to be an accounting quiz.
The third term would be full of assignments. “There will be one that requires you to go out and survey members of the general public. You have to do this while balancing time between another 3 assignments, all on tight deadlines, as well as club activities and general studying for classes,’ he says.
Networking is where you have to pretend you are interested in being around someone, just for the sake of leveraging their acquaintance later. Another point is the cutthroat competition that seeps into every aspect of the student’s life. Letting people in on your secrets to success will take away your competitive advantage.
Coming to placements, media reports of the crore-plus salaries are not for PGP students, but for PGPX graduates. “And they are the result of conversion from dollars to rupees, including several one-time bonuses and other inflationary tactics. Don’t be misled. Be aware of what’s happening; IIMA publishes its placement reports in a clear and lucid format on its website,” he says.
Bhardwaj says he found reviewing of CVs by seniors and the mock GDs (group discussions) to be of not much use.
Placements at most IIMs works on the day system with the most desirable I-banks and consults get the creme de la creme of the batch on Day 0/Day 1 and Day 3 has the dregs of the batch left for the least sought-after firms.
However, IIMA has a cluster system, ideally meant to segregate recruiters based on industry domain. The catch is that I-banks and consults are, to the average MBA, the most sought-after places. And this fact is known to both sides. So what happens is that a job that some other institutes finish within four days (and we could, in theory, do in two or three) is stretched out to almost a week.
Sadashiv Pradhan (XLRI, Jamshedpur 2014-16) says a class of toppers s ensures that every point on grade scale is being fought for, for every lecture you fail to perform class participation (CP) you lose valuable marks, every wrong answer in a quiz has an implication on final grade. The biggest and most intense rat race happens at the top b-schools of India.
“Once upon a time scoring 90 out 100 would have made me extremely happy, but these days if I score 90 out of 100, I need to check how many scored more than me and if the average is 95 then that 90 becomes absolutely useless,” he says.
Another person who prefers to remain anonymous, questions the much touted diversity in batches filled with engineers. He also claims that most of the toppers are big time cheats who carry chits to exams, copy from people sitting next to them and also changing the answers in MCQs during paper discussions.
Aviral Bhatnagar, (IIM Ahmedabad, Class of 2016) points out that “Success” comes with a lot of effort and luck. There will be people better than you in academics, sports, socializing or communication. Find what you’re good at, or stand up and compete.
A greater awareness and maturity makes you understand that life is tough for everyone. Things get tougher as you go higher with even more competent people, he adds. (Image courtesy : pixabay.com)
