What to extract from 2 years at a top B-School?

The B-school Bureaucracy perspective:

Top B-schools act as an automatic filter at the entry level for students, so even if there is no value addition in 2 years the students still get placed at decent positions in the corporate. Thus, why should a B-school make an effort to add value to the students, if top profile students come at entry level and top companies line up at the end of two years to place them?

Just rely on a negetive sadist system of relative grading for checking the value addition to students.

Finally the impact on students is that they develop a crab mentality and learn to trick the system and they become so expert in this that when they enter the corporate they still apply their experience of tricking the system, using politics to move around in the organization.

Though there may be some value driven visionaries at top postions in a good B-School but they are highly out numbered by the ones who play power games and are in real control of these institutions.

The curriculum perspective:

By the end of 2 years most students hardly remember the names of 50% of the subjects they get taught.

You wish the subjects you were taught after your summer internship were taught earlier, the internship would make so much more meaning if this were the case.

Being taught by the same theory and cases that have been taught since BC (Before Christ) era, at the end you get to know that every case scenario is different and you gotta start once again. Even that can be considered as learning but then few subject and professors are completely like gravity; they totally suck (courtesy Abhinav). Only few professors have an impact and surely a worthwhile impact.

The student’s perspective:

Students enter the top b-school with a lot of hope, dreamy eyes, high on success of cracking the entry level barrier, everyone around them in the society looking upto them as heroes. Soon they realise that however tough the entry may be, the next two years and finally passing out from the instituion is a much tougher game.

Everyone enters a top b-school with a great level of pride. But only a few remain with the same level of pride when they move out.

Fear, insecurity, compulsions rule your instincts and decision for the next two years. Students get conditioned to be perfect part of systems rather than create systems of their own.

People who leave jobs of 6 lacs and spend two valueable years of their life at a b-school get so insecure about a 10 lac job like it’s their purpose in life to get that job and they look to go into depression if such an opportunity seems to get distant.

So finally what can students extract out of a b-school?

· Consider yourself lucky if you can make some very good friends for life, because b-school is not an ideal college atmosphere. With so much hatred and negetivity around only few lucky people get good friends.

· Study enough to be at par in most subjects and pursue those subjects that interest you passionately apart from the regular course curriculum. Talk to professors because they can give you learning in 10 minutes which it would have taken them 10 years of experience to learn themselves.

· A b-school is a treasure vault of network and contacts. Make use of it.

· Find a reason for being in a b-school apart from academics and placements. Otherwise life can really be hell.

· Initiatives in student activities: There is a direct level of difference in the personality, attitude, mindset of those who participate or are incharge of things and events and the rest of the crowd

· Social work: My personal experience says it can be one of the best things you can do to yourself. Engage in a cause. Helps you throughout your life. Can even get you a job (ask Prajnan). It was my reason for existence and my way of leaving a mark in a top b-school. I learnt so much more in this process rather than classes and projects. Value for a lifetime.

· Enjoy the non 9-6 job routine, because most people might be doing that for the rest of their lives. Enjoy the crazy night life and schedules and make it a memorable two years of being a student again.

· Make a mark. Make you presence felt. Try going out of the b-school with more pride than with what you entered this place.

All the best J