Wassupp people,
With CAT servers failing everywhere, I think its my moral duty to tell all the guys and gals taking CAT this year how it actually is in a top-notch B-school.
I joined MDI in June 2009 and now its December 2009. 6 months is more than enough to decipher the mystery of a b-school. But first some definitions:
1. FAFF: anything which has nothing to do whatsoever you want to talk/write about but you talk/write about it anyway because you don't know the actual stuff. This definition may vary from person to person.
2. RAFF: acronym for Random Arbit Faff !!! ;)
3. NPA: Non-performing asset. Someone who does nothing whatsoever for you group projects/presentations except taking the marks (and sometimes credit too!)
4. Ghissu: That person who wishes to be buried with their books and will probably learn how to have sex from them.
Now that the basics of a b-school are given, let us proceed to the details.
TERM-I
Firstly, the guys from a Commerce background are Gods and the engineering/science grads are relative idiots. Please accept that. Only then can you have enough gumption to ask their help in MANAC-I and MICROECONOMICS. And if you don't then you will probably end up like me. MANAC - I a B and MICROECONOMICS a C-.
The only place where engineering grads may have a slight advantage is Stats, but B-school stats are nothing like engineering stats. You will probably scratch all your dandruff off solving even one question (although that more credit to Prof. Joydip's papers). HBO and MP-I are the two subjects that you can (rather have to) faff your way through. Also you can afford to be a NPA if you are lucky enough to have a commerce grad in your project group. The best subject is OCPS where you just have give speeches and learn how to use Powerpoint to make presentations and answer std. VII english papers all over again. But the subject that takes the cake is LAB, where you are required to know stuff like the entire Indian Contract Law of some year and the Indian Companies Act 1956 and stuff like that (SFITians can equate it to IEM :P).
Term-I is the time when the toppers will be seen. Most of them will be ghissus but there will be one or two genuinely nice ones (eg: Priyata Modi, Calcutta University, Eco topper). You will also see the really intelligent people who will also do reasonably well (eg: Sumeet Mitra, SPCE, 74%) and then the people who are intelligent but lazy (yours truly) and the really really lazy ones! You will also find a completely different species called the PLACECOMERS (eg: Suraj Nambiar, Nadi and Divya), next post for them.
Term-I is also when you'll make all your friends. And trust me these will be friends for life, it cannot be any other way. Finally, please do not screw up your CG like me (5.43). Its hell trying to make it up later. Minimum 6. My reasons including a grade dock for bunking too much and not being able to attend term presentations due to being sick.
SUMMERS:
According to me summers are the greatest levellers. They really give an ego boost to people like me who get placed on slot zero and a battering to the true ghissus. But this is more of a biased statement. I got just one shortlist on day zero, which I converted! I didn't get shortlists from any of the dream companies of mine :( So the point is be prepared. You will NOT get shortlists. Convert what you get. But there are instances of people getting amazingly high number of shortlists and not converting a single one (one had about 30 shorlists!!!) So it works either way. What do companies look for? Doesn't matter! You need to be confident and more importantly lucky. A close friend of mine was rejected in the final round of each company she was shortlisted (including the top 3 marketing firms on campus) and then finally made it through the last company of the day zero.
Please be clear as to what kind of job you want to do in the future. 3 months is enough for you to know that. If you are still confused, you are fucked! Royally! Aniruddha Ghoshal wanted to do Ops so he applied only to ops profiles and finally got through an Ops profile. That's clarity of thought. Now he is off to Europe for an exchange tour in term V.
Btw, Godrej Sara Lee picked me up for summers.
About me:
Well I am a idiot as of now, with a CG of 5.43 (m screwed) and nothing else. Though I have a really good summers ahead. Hoping to turn things around in Term-II (doesn't look like it with a 14/60 in my MACROECONOMICS mid-term). Hopefully, I'll become better as time progresses.
Best of luck to all my friends taking the CAT,
cheers,
Moksha
Notes:
HBO - Human Behaviour in Organizations
MP - Market Planning
STM- Statistics for Management
OCPS - Oral Communication and Presentation Skills
LAB - Legal Aspects of Business
