The Master of Business Administration (The MBA!)

    
Last class today .. and i missed it .. Guess that sums up my MBA!
   (p.s: Status copied from Anuj Chaudhary i guess that also sums up my MBA :P )

That was the status message that i had posted in Facebook last week. Though the status msg might look funny the journey to get the degree was not that easy. The one year PGPM program in Great Lakes Institute of Management is coming to an end and it was a wonderful one year for me.

If you look at my blog archive the last post would have been on 31rst January 2010... i have not blogged for more than 15 months. I think that will give an insight into how hectic the program was. Of the 12 months here in Great Lakes the first 6 months i was very very busy and in the last 6 months i was very very lazy :P

I like to keep things simple and in a structured way so here is a simple structure for this blog post.

1. MBA entrance examinations (aka How i realized how stupid i was?)
2. Great Lakes Interview & all other nonsense
3. Induction & Orientation and Chettinad Hospital
4. Hostel Life
5. Terms 1 to 7
6. Friends in Great Lakes
7. What i learnt from my MBA (both inside and outside classroom)!

MBA entrance examinations (aka How i realized how stupid i was?)

The idea of doing an MBA came to me during the final year of Engineering college... every other dog was either preparing for CAT or writing GRE to go to US. After checking with some seniors i came to know there is exam called GMAT which is required to get into the top MBA programs in US. Why MBA and Why not MS? Somehow i never had any interest in MS... MBA seemed very exciting and i have always wanted to start a business on my own and so a MBA degree suited my purpose well.

T join a B-School in US one would require  a 2 year work experience and so i took up the IT job and thought i would prepare for GMAT during weekends. Joined Princeton Review in April 2008 on the opening day of IPL due to the continuous torture of a best friend who wanted company for her MBA prep. Wasted Rs.25,000 in Princeton Review GMAT training program. Whatever that they taught was very basic and even their manuals were of no use. Anyway after scheduling and rescheduling for many months one fine day i gave my first GMAT exam.

GMAT exam fee - Rs.12,500

Rescheduling fee no.1  - Rs.2500

Rescheduling fee no.2 - Rs.2500

Final score - 540/800. 

It was pathetic. Now i didn't have any financial backup to fund  my MBA in US and i thought i would study by getting scholarship with high GMAT score. Now that the GMAT was a disaster i decided to bury my Harvard sreams and started looking at Indian MBA programs. Recession also hit in US that year and so my decision to do an Indian MBA seemed prudent.  But by that time the deadline for applying to CAT, XAT  was over and by chance i got to know about Mudra Institute of Communication (MICA) for which i had some time to apply through GMAT. I had a month to prepare for my 2nd attempt in GMAT and MICA required only 600 in GMAT for applying. 

GMAT exam fee (2nd attempt) - Rs.12,500. 

GMAT score - 560/800. 

Wow whatay great improvement. But nevertheless i thought all happened for good and started preparing for the toughest exam in the entire universe - CAT. In April 2009 exactly an year after i joined Princeton i joined TIME institute. Coaching fees - Rs.12,000 including the test series. Work was getting hectic everyday and i struggled all throughout 2009 to balance work and CAT preparation. Usually i play cricket every Sunday with my college friends but even that took a hit after CAT preparation. Every Sunday was spent giving some MOCKCAT or AIMCAT. My personal life also went through lot of Ups and Downs but i was determined to get a good score in CAT. 

CAT score in 2009 - 43.5 percentile with 13 percentile in Data Interpretation. I seriously don't know what happened. I used to score 80+ in most of the Mock CATs... some said it was due to the normalization adopted by the IIM. Anyway continued writing other entrance exams like JMET, SNAP, XAT, NMAT, MAT, GREAT, MICAT etc etc... Scored 70 percentile in XAT. The 2009 season was a complete disaster for me. The only interview call came from MICA since i had cleared the MICAT exam. 

Application fees for examinations in 2009 - Rs. 7000

Application fees for B-Schools in 2009 - Rs. 18,000. 

Flight tickets to attend MICA interview - Rs. 8000.

Went to Ahmedabad in April 2010 to attend the MICA interview. I was extremely confident that i would get selected and probably that over confidence backfired. I was not even wait listed, directly got rejected in the final round. Next day i went to Shabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad and contemplated about my life and my future. The IT job was boring and i desperately needed a MBA. Somehow after spending some time in the ashram my mind was calm. Throughout this difficult phase the only good thing was my photography... whenever i felt like taking a break i went on a photographic trip with my friends. My photography helped me remain sane :)

2010 the entire cycle repeated - CAT, XAT, SPJAT, NMAT, JMET, SNAP, MAT etc etc... more or less wasted the same amount of money. But this time i didn't take any exam that seriously. 

CAT 2010 score came... thought i did well but ended up scoring only 84 percentile. XAT 2011  was the toughest exam that i ever wrote and i was expecting something like 60 or 70 percentile. But when the results came even i couldn't believe the scores - 
XAT 2011 - 93.57 percentile. 
i was extremely happy that day and i knew that i will surely get into a B-School with that score. 


That year i had calls from lot of colleges like GIM, Great Lakes, MICA, BIM, IFMR, IMT-N, LIBA etc... Of all the colleges i found Great Lakes to be the best college. It had a one year program and the program was designed for people with substantial work experience was a plus and so i was determined to get into Great Lakes. Lot of my friends were surprised that i didn't attend the MICA interview that year since they all knew how much i was crazy about MICA. The fact was i had 4 years of work experience at that time and i really didn't see any value in doing a MBA from MICA with 4 years work ex... MICA's PGDM was designed to suit freshers and people with less than 2 years of work ex moreover my girlfriend was adamant that i take up a one year MBA program and remain close to Chennai and so i started preparing for the Great Lakes Interview. 

So after wasting close to Rs.1,50,000 lakhs and after countless exams finally i get a shot to get into a B-School. 

Great Lakes Interview & all other nonsense:

Great Lakes Interview was another comedy... Whatever i said the interviewer would reply back Why would you need an MBA to do that you can very well do that without an MBA. It was a complete stress interview and though i managed to answer all the questions i was not very confident of getting selected.

By the time the GL result came out i attended GD/PI of few more colleges and was also planning to go the world cup final in mumbai :D

So the next one month or so after the result came out was absolute whirlwind with planning for my trip to mumbai, putting papers in HP, knowledge transfer, getting ready to join GL... Now i couldn't remember anything i was always on the move and everything happened in a flash.

Came to Great Lakes campus on April 17th and while all others were networking, playing, chatting, having a jam session with all the guitarists in campus i just slept :D

Induction & Orientation and Chettinad Hospital

Induction and Orientation was fun. We had paint ball, some exercises, some obstacle games, theater,movies, dance, DJ and lot more. It was supposed to be a ice breaking session and for three days we had so much fun.

Everyday there were some accident or the other and people were injuring themselves trying to show off their skills in the obstacle game. People tried to jump form a long ladder and hurt their ankles and some even got fractured and they were out of action for many months.

When my turn came a good friend who was standing next to me advised me - "Are you going to win any medal by crossing this obstacle faster than others? Do it slowly without hurting yourself. Golden piece of advice i literally crawled through the obstacle. Who would want to hurt themselves during the first week of college and miss out all the fun for the next few months.

Paint Ball

Hostel Life 

My room - F4K

In my entire life i have never lived in a hostel.  So i was excited and scared at the same time. Hostel life turned out to be a heaven. I had my own room and the facilities were fantastic. Had some of the best guys as my neighbors. The only problem that i faced during the initial few days was getting a shower before class. Classes usually start @ 8 or 9 in the morning and the restrooms will always be occupied by someone else. Luckily i was an early riser and i started to take bath as early as 6AM.

I used to sleep at around 10 PM and wake up @ 5 AM now for the last 3,4 months my sleep schedule changed upside down. Every week we had some party or the other and we had our own Prabha Wines Shop (Santhosh's room changed into a club) where we played Carrom, Cards, Fifa, OTB (Open the Bottle) sessions and chatted continuously.

During exam hostel looks deserted and usually all my friends will come to my room (since i had a white board) to study and in a single night we will prepare for 2 exams. Thanks to my friends i managed to pass all the exams somehow :)

Bakery Session in Progress - Mohitji's room

Block 4 - The coolest block :P

The good thing about GL hostel was i never felt lonely not even for a single moment. Lungi Party, Watching Cricket, EPL in the TV room, Playing foosball, Vetti chats near the amphitheatre & thiruvalluvar statue. Had some best time of my life here. The fact that the college was near Mahabalipuram a tourist spot made life super for us. Most of the restaurants in Mahabs were good and so used to go out every now and then to have a super dinner by the Mahabs beach.

Terms 1 to 7

Already this blog post is very lengthy so i don't want to bore you even further by explaining about the subjects that i learnt here in Great Lakes. I will just sum up whatever that i learnt in a line or two about each subject. In GL most of the professors followed the case based approach and it was interesting to learn the subjects through the case based methodology.

Term1:

Marketing Management 1 - One of the best course in Great Lakes handled by Dr.Tapan Kumar Panda. Changed my perspective altogether about Marketing. Even if i go to a roadside shop i would know why certain products are placed at a certain place. Retail, FMCG he covered everything and the cases that he gave for us to solve were very entertaining. Overall whatever marketing knowledge that i gained i owe it to Tapan Sir.

Business Statistics - taught by P.K.Viswanathan Sir. He is a statistics wizard. For someone who wrote Probability & Statistics thrice in UG i had great difficulty in understanding the concepts. Mota Moti a very enjoyable class. PKV sir was a genius yet very humble and i really liked the way he hummed songs when class was going on.

Financial Accounting - Dr. Suri Sekhar - You gaaat it. God level in accounting. Only reason why even people like me understood what a balance sheet was. Assets, Liabilities, Cash flow statement he had the ability to make even a kid understand the difficult subject of Accounting.

Micro Economics - Prof.Shanthi - Economics was a very important subject. Without knowledge of Demand & Supply how will you understand business? But these classes were terror classes. Prof. Shanthi was known for her notorious cold calling and people literally hid during her classes. Later when i interacted with her while organizing many events i came to know she was a good person but inside class room you can never escape her stare and cold calling... better to go prepared with pre-reads.

Intelligently Interacting with others - Prof. ISF Raj - an excellent faculty from XLRI. Course was about how to deal with groups and other Organizational Behavior stuff. Boring subject but he made it interesting with many examples and acecdotes.

Business Communication1 - Lalitha Maheshwaran - Great class, total fun, we were asked to give 2 mins speech about some topic of our choice and we had some legendary speeches from Spartans in BC class. Her teaching methodology was unique she showed movie clips which was very effective in learning.

Business Communication2 - P.B.Varadarajan - The less said the better. The entire spartan batch would agree that this was the worst class in the entire program. We were supposed to learn how to write B-Plan, Reports etc but we ended up doing useless ppts about some stupid ABC company. Hope i never meet him again.

Term2:

Macro Economics - Rakesh Singh aka Rocky the Rockstar... His last lecture will be a special treat in which he speaks about the indian economy continuously for 3 hours without any break and poof he will be gone and the entire batch of 300 spartans were dumbstruck. Was able to understand what Mint and Economic Times published everyday thanks to this man.

Managerial Accounting - our beloved Dean - Uncle Bala Balachandran - Believe it or not folks only when the class is about to get over Uncle Bala would remember that he actually needs to teach something about Managerial Accounting and Activity based costing... a super course with 90% Uncle Bala's gyaan and 10% Managerial Accounting slides :D

Financial Management - Oh a finance paper so zzzzzzzz slept in all of the FM classes!!

Marketing Management 2 - Harvard cases were good but seriously What was the Learning? except DIODVAC & green chutney :D

Operations Management - Prof.Vaidy Jayraman - a cool prof who watched Shivaji movie along with us.. Boom Kaboooom he will never allow you to sleep even for a second by making all these noises a very nice professor who taught OM in a simple way and who remained as a very good friend for many spartans including me.

HR Management - A.G.Balasubramaniam - Didn't you read the subject title HR Mangement. Boring. Slept off.

IT for Management - Prof.S.Ramanathan - My empirical study guide and mentor... super cool prof. Subject was very easy since it was mostly related to IT. Had awesome fun in his class.

Term3:

Strategic Management - Prof. Sriram - Finally a subject apart from marketing which interested me. Porter's 5 forces and learnt many strategic moves by legendary businesses. Important subject for consultants. But i am still puzzled how i manged to get 2.35 marks out of 30 for class participation :P

Quantitative Methods - T.N.Badri - Very good professor but still i don't know what i actually learnt from this subject.

Market Research - Prof.Bharadwaj - A very nice professor, he repeats everything twice so that everyone understands the concepts very clearly.

"You can't just ask customers what they want then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new." - Steve Jobs.

Steve jobs never relied on Market Research and scoffed at it. So am I :D

Management Information Systems - Prof. Sridhar Nerur - Another super cool prof from US.  No bandha No vetti scene he used to say how he learnt more from the chats he had near the Tea Shops in IIM - Bangalore than in Classroom and i whole heartedly agree with him. Subject was also interesting since it was related to IT.

Investment Analysis - Prof. B. Venkatesh - Only finance paper in which i paid attention and got an "A" (Thanks to Mohitji and Mukeshji's bakeries before the exam) . Terrific professor and whatever that he taught us will surely help us plan our personal investments in a better way.

Mandarin - we learnt this for 3 terms and the only thing that i still remember is "Ni papa mama shenti hao ma? (How is your father and mother? )

Karma Yoga - another important component in Great Lakes is Karma Yoga. Is it social service, transformational leadership, god knows what it is... Initially i was very interested in doing it. We were split into teams and were assigned a village to do Karma Yoga. We conducted Science clubs, Drawing competition and some of my other friends organized health camps in their villages but after a month or so we got different directions. Stop doing what you have been doing so far.. do this do that and all other unnecessary distractions. I was getting tired of it since it was difficult explaining to the villagers what we were trying to do and so i quit KY after 3 terms and i do not regret it.

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Terms 1 to 3 were the very important terms where all the core courses were taught to us and it was extremely hectic and tiring. Classes start as early as 7 in the morning and extend till 11 PM add to that the surprise quizzes, group assignments, presentations the pressure was too much and the exams were very tough. Somehow cleared the 3 terms and our gang took a much needed vacation and went to Wayanad during our term break. Had a beer after nearly 4 years to celebrate the completion of three grueling terms. 

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 Terms 4 to 7 consisted of elective courses and since i specialized in marketing i took marketing courses predominantly. Life was good. Light work load. Interesting subjects. More free time for fun activities until placements happened.

Placement Week:

I thought i could relax a little bit after Term 3 but i had to prepare for the placements in December. Started reading all the subjects all over again. Wrote many versions of my resume to an extent even on day0 i was making changes to my resume. Attended TCS, Infy, HCL, MSAT interviews and got offers from Infy and MSAT and i chose MSaT since the role was interesting. Consultant in User Experience Management for web portals. I was happy that i got placed on Day 0 and so went to Akshaya with my friend Sanchit to have a beer to celebrate :)

The course load was light and still we were made to remain in the campus since we had classes every other day. I was feeling bored since i hadn't ventured out on any photography trip nor took up any assignments.  I had made a conscious decision not to take up any wedding photography assignments to concentrate on my studies and in the last few months since there wasn't much to do i started doing wedding photography assignments once again and loved every bit of it.

After placements i ran out of my savings and so i started participating in many photography, short film contests and managed to win few of them.

1) First Prize in TAPMI photography contest - "Right Angles"

2) Third Prize in IRMA photography contest - "Udaan"

3) First Prize in GL Zoopraxis movie making contest - "Zoopraxis"

20,000 cash prize and i managed to stay afloat in the last few months of GL :P

Movie for first round - "Dream On":

Movie for second round - "Find your L'Attitude":

Friends in Great Lakes 

The most important part of this post. Without my friends i am a big zero. When friends are around and they support you... you feel like you have the strength of thousands of elephants. They are the reason for my happiness, laughter, enjoyment everything and i am really glad that i found some amazing friends for a lifetime. Our gang is called the "Pin Palagai Pasanga (the Back Benchers) and seriously a blog wouldn't be enough to list down all the fun we had for the past one year. 

Thanks a lot guys for supporting me in my every moment of happiness and sadness. 

Apart from PPP i got lot of other wonderful friends in Great Lakes and after all that is what you need from a MBA college. Our batch was very diverse and we celebrated each and every indian festival in an amazing way... be it pongal, holi or onam - everything is the same for us and we all celebrated together like a family. 

I know i can go to any city/town in India and if i need any help a spartan would surely be near to help me out. Thanks a lot guys... We are the best... Ahoooo!!! Ahoooooo!!!!

What i learnt from my MBA (both inside and outside classroom)!

At last the end of this very lengthy blogpost. When i sit and think on the very last day of my MBA program as to what i learnt from my MBA i couldn't think of anything.... But i am sure i have changed a great lot in the past one year for good. 

Who can be a better teacher than life itself and i think the last one year has given me enough experience to handle life in the best way possible... 

I am very happy today that i have completed my MBA today... As of now i have been placed as a consultant in an IT major but i will be starting my own business (something related to creative media industry) in a couple of years and i surely need all your blessings and support for that :)

An amazing journey has come to end and i would like to end this post with a wonderful quote from my favorite movie - "Motorcycle Diaries"...


"What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two; melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land."

Cheers,
Shiva