Preferences gone awry !

I have been thinking about it for quite a while now and what I am going to write is nothing new. However the reason why I am still writing this is cus I can relate to the topic and want to sum up my ideas here in this blog.

MBA has become a much coveted degree these days and in India the degree is synonymous with IIMs thanks to the hype created by media about the same and the brand created by the IIMs themselves.The talk shows dedicated to exam taking strategies and expert opinions before the D -day (for millions of aspirants) have given CAT (Common Aptitude Test)the status of something more than an exam.Such extraordinary attention to an exam causes jitters to even the best prepared.But then CAT is not about preparation . It is about the ability to think on the spot and take decisions in the most stressful situations in minimum possible time.

In the past few years the number of students taking the exam has risen drastically and along with it has changed the difficulty level of the exam which continues to get tougher year after year .Unpredictabilty is the core aspect of the exam which test setters have tried to maintain always.Increasing the toughness probably is one way of achieving that objective. I believe that these institutes are aiming at people who have certain basic qualities like managing time and making decisions that can fetch maximum benefit while keeping a cool head.
Not being able to crack the exam should in no way deter a person from doing MBA. Whereas there could be many reasons for the same which I would not like to touch the best and the most motivating could be ,"A person not fitting in the pool of people that these institues want". Their curriculum is designed keeping in mind certain pre-requisites which one could or could not have.

There is one set of people who year after year toil trying to get basic quant fundamentals correct, cramming word-meanings , improving english comprehension, interpreting statistics and working both at improving speed and ability to handle complexity.For some it becomes an obsession .
There is another set who compromise on the standard set by themselves and look for other options.
And there are some who are diverted to taking GMAT.
Most of the junta in India has a lot of misconceptions about GMAT .Whenever I used to talk about it with my friends , the first thing which I used to be told was "It is very expensive.Period".
I feel the cost of taking this exam along with applying to few chosen universities comes equivalent to taking a dozen entrance exams in India and then applying to umpteen number of schools(which is what majority of the people do).
During the past few months I have seen a lot of people in the age group 23-25 opting for the above mentioned third option.Issues like reservation of seats in colleges in India clubbed with the increasing difficulty level of the exam and urgency to go for higher studies look like a convincing reason for this which many a times are sugar coated and brought forth in the name of "Better international exposure, better curriculum, world class infrastructure etc etc". These factors are undoubted USPs of an international MBA but then I would not believe if someone in the age-group 22-25 would tell me that he/she not even once try taking CAT.I am not saying this because I believe that Indian schools are the best but I am trying to bring forth the common thought process and actions of aspirants. The education that one gets here is up to the mark if not best according to international standards(this I can say because IIM-A has only been recently added to top 100 b-schools list) and is very inexpensive.

GMAT unlike CAT tests proficiency in Critical Reasoning , Sentence Correction,Essay writing and like CAT it too has Reading comprehension and Quant.
I would not go into more details of these exams but obtaining a good GMAT score I would say is an achievable target with a not so unpredictable result after one has put in decent amount of hardwork.
Incase of GMAT , selecting foreign universities which would suit one's budget and aspirations is not an easy task.It involves a lot of networking and exploring unknown horizons.Personally for me going to a foreign land for studying with a loan burden on head would not be an easy thing to do and would definitely pull me out of my comfort zone.
Many people after securing admission to good and reputed universities abroad , tend to compare the placement scenarios outside to that prevalent in India , without the knowledge that market forces and economy have a lot to contribute in this. Abroad , even colleges like Harvard donot claim, 100% placement after 3 months of graduation.However , because economy in India has been so buoyant for the past few years , such statistics could come as a shock to knaive MBA aspirants.

Placements and salaries offered are not just an outcome of the school's reputation and a student's profile but they have a lot to do with the size of the market in which the job is being searched or looked for and availabilty of talent .
And hence , comparisions between two things which are not similar can turn out to be a bit misleading and demotivating if a person is not really clear about what he wants from his/her higher education.

PS : For anyone who has gone through the above article , the following blog would be an eye opener http://mediocrenarrogant.blogspot.com/.