I, The Absolute

An MBA experience has to be more than just academics. If someone is looking to do only studying, he is better off doing an executive education where the only takeaway is academics and of course a certificate. An on-campus MBA experience has to include a few sport, group work, involvement in club activities to develop one’s interest in fields, industry and leadership skills and can include a host of other things. I realize this more and more as the days go by. I am never going to get another time in life when I will not be responsible to anyone but myself. Nor am I going to get a time when I can think of playing a sport whenever I want, going to library at 1 am, or get to interact with people from such diverse backgrounds. Now is the time. If I allowed myself to shut up in my room and keep to books, I have surely wasted the investment. I have been consciously struggling / trying to keep to this idea and trying to advocate this cause.

Indians are more academically oriented. Our Accounting, Statistics or Decision making Models professors admit that the ISB students are quite easy in picking up quant related topics. Wharton or Kellogg students would fall way behind (not necessarily so in qualitative / nebulous stuff). The students in India also judge other students based mostly on their grade. Hence, the pressure to keep studying / get grades. This is an extension of what used to happen when we were in +2 or in undergrad. There is a urgent need to change this. A few companies that come to campus are a little finicky about grades; but that should not make the entire learning experience redundant so that we end up focusing only on studies and grades.

People at ISB have been successful in their jobs and have some achievement tagged to them. If we could succeed without an MBA degree, where is the reason to think that an MBA will make us more vulnerable if we don’t get good grades. If some firm wants to pick us up based only on our grades, not our work experience, then we should also have reservations about joining such firms. Education, and the related experience, is about emancipation not thralldom.