Tushar Jha
Like most aspirants, with a twinkle in the eye, I too set out to be an MBA.Admittedly, the idea of doing an MBA dawned on me only after I spent half a year as a Software Engineer. And it wasn’t by hearsay. It was after I saw MBAs doing a variety of jobs that someone as a “Software Engineer” wasn’t. The denouement was “An MBA opens doors”. The quest to find the “right job” had just begun. In that quest, I did all the right things. Toiled hard by sacrificing weekends of fun and relaxation, took hundreds of mock examinations and even gathered a lot about the industry that I was working in. I was obsessed with the idea of getting into a top B School (read IIMs being on top of that list).
But like most, out of the hundred and fifty thousand or so aspirants, the big day (CAT) was a disaster. The situation seemed helpless for a few days. But I soon realized the fight wasn’t over. Thought “Those two hours cannot be the deciding factor for the whole of my life. I know where I stand today. I also roughly know where I want to be after an MBA. I am quite knowledgeable about the industry I work in. When the rubber meets the road, I think I will be able to prove myself. But, I do need the basics of business from a credible institute.” With this in mind, I took a few more two hour examinations which could take me to other good B schools. In the middle of March 2005, I knew I was going to IIT Kharagpur’s Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSOM).
Now IIT. And a B school within the place which is renowned across the world, for its technocrats. There wasn’t any skepticism in my mind when I landed at Kharagpur, in terms of the quality of education that I would receive there. But there was anxiousness. Anxiousness to know who my cohorts were? What did they have in mind? Did they share my sensibilities? That was soon laid to rest. Here we had a bunch of “Want to Prove” ers, who like me had worked as professionals in well respected companies, had confidence in themselves and were quite clear in their goals and aspirations. Not undermining their importance, but it is a common belief amongst B School grads that, more than the books and faculty, you learn from your peers who come from diverse backgrounds. And if they share your sensibilities, then you’ve got only the LeT terrorists to worry about.
So then. What did we do in the last year? Like any other top B School we spent the nights delving into the balance sheet, following the curves of Demand & Supply, arguing unendingly on brands and their positioning, figuring out how we could convert fixed costs into variable, discussing synergies of business and technology and also donning the hat of a CXO to design strategy for an organization. What else did we do? We treated ourselves as executives of a company (VGSOM) and worked to improve its results. We invited and hosted dignitaries from the Corporate world and Academia and learnt a lot from their seminars. We presented and positioned ourselves quite well when the media covered us, successfully (Let’s face it. It’s Placements) extending the IIT brand to MBA. We participated in B School Competitions all over India and returned with many prizes. And finally, our patron, Mr. Vinod Gupta, turned a dream into reality for us when he took us to the US to meet the legendary Warren Buffet and also exposed us to an international university, University of Nebraska.
What are we doing now? Differentiation is the key to success in a marketplace. At VGSOM, we have a USP. Unlike other B Schools where the internship is a 2 month stint, we work with a company for 6 months. The benefits of the extended period are quite obvious, in that the company gets time to extract substantial work from and judge the student and the student gets a good shot at work that he might want to take up post MBA. Currently, all my batch mates are working in corporations all over India in diverse fields. The number of first timers who visited our campus for the internship placements is indicative of the Industry’s interest in this feature and also to our progress as top B School.
IIT Kharagpur, Vinod Gupta School of Management
www.som.iitkgp.ernet.in
Source-http://blogs.business-standard.com/guestblog/2006/08/04/i-am-in-the-fray/
Like most aspirants, with a twinkle in the eye, I too set out to be an MBA.Admittedly, the idea of doing an MBA dawned on me only after I spent half a year as a Software Engineer. And it wasn’t by hearsay. It was after I saw MBAs doing a variety of jobs that someone as a “Software Engineer” wasn’t. The denouement was “An MBA opens doors”. The quest to find the “right job” had just begun. In that quest, I did all the right things. Toiled hard by sacrificing weekends of fun and relaxation, took hundreds of mock examinations and even gathered a lot about the industry that I was working in. I was obsessed with the idea of getting into a top B School (read IIMs being on top of that list).
But like most, out of the hundred and fifty thousand or so aspirants, the big day (CAT) was a disaster. The situation seemed helpless for a few days. But I soon realized the fight wasn’t over. Thought “Those two hours cannot be the deciding factor for the whole of my life. I know where I stand today. I also roughly know where I want to be after an MBA. I am quite knowledgeable about the industry I work in. When the rubber meets the road, I think I will be able to prove myself. But, I do need the basics of business from a credible institute.” With this in mind, I took a few more two hour examinations which could take me to other good B schools. In the middle of March 2005, I knew I was going to IIT Kharagpur’s Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSOM).
Now IIT. And a B school within the place which is renowned across the world, for its technocrats. There wasn’t any skepticism in my mind when I landed at Kharagpur, in terms of the quality of education that I would receive there. But there was anxiousness. Anxiousness to know who my cohorts were? What did they have in mind? Did they share my sensibilities? That was soon laid to rest. Here we had a bunch of “Want to Prove” ers, who like me had worked as professionals in well respected companies, had confidence in themselves and were quite clear in their goals and aspirations. Not undermining their importance, but it is a common belief amongst B School grads that, more than the books and faculty, you learn from your peers who come from diverse backgrounds. And if they share your sensibilities, then you’ve got only the LeT terrorists to worry about.
So then. What did we do in the last year? Like any other top B School we spent the nights delving into the balance sheet, following the curves of Demand & Supply, arguing unendingly on brands and their positioning, figuring out how we could convert fixed costs into variable, discussing synergies of business and technology and also donning the hat of a CXO to design strategy for an organization. What else did we do? We treated ourselves as executives of a company (VGSOM) and worked to improve its results. We invited and hosted dignitaries from the Corporate world and Academia and learnt a lot from their seminars. We presented and positioned ourselves quite well when the media covered us, successfully (Let’s face it. It’s Placements) extending the IIT brand to MBA. We participated in B School Competitions all over India and returned with many prizes. And finally, our patron, Mr. Vinod Gupta, turned a dream into reality for us when he took us to the US to meet the legendary Warren Buffet and also exposed us to an international university, University of Nebraska.
What are we doing now? Differentiation is the key to success in a marketplace. At VGSOM, we have a USP. Unlike other B Schools where the internship is a 2 month stint, we work with a company for 6 months. The benefits of the extended period are quite obvious, in that the company gets time to extract substantial work from and judge the student and the student gets a good shot at work that he might want to take up post MBA. Currently, all my batch mates are working in corporations all over India in diverse fields. The number of first timers who visited our campus for the internship placements is indicative of the Industry’s interest in this feature and also to our progress as top B School.
IIT Kharagpur, Vinod Gupta School of Management
www.som.iitkgp.ernet.in
Source-http://blogs.business-standard.com/guestblog/2006/08/04/i-am-in-the-fray/