My MBA Journey - Part 9 (Which coaching for GD-PI preparation of CAT)

While I was preparing the international b-schools’ applications, result of CAT was announced on 9th January 2009.And this was the biggest day of my life (till then).

To my surprise, I had managed to get shortlisted by few IIMs for their next admission stage :Group Discussion (GD) and Personal Interview (PI) .But as was expected, English section proved to be my roadblock (or saviour in another sense)in that I could not get GD-PI calls from IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta (for people unfamiliar with CAT there are 7 IIMs : 3 mentioned above plus IIM Lucknow, Indore, Khozikhode and Shillong (IIM Shillong being the newest is not worthy of being applied (as I understood from my interaction with several CAT aspirants) and indeed many aspirants do not apply here)).

Now I was in real dilemma. I had my IIMs interview scheduled in February and March for which I had to prepare from scratch. I had 5 foreign b-school applications still remaining to complete in the same timeframe. I had to prepare for the interview(s) of foreign b-schools (I had applied/will apply to) as I was sure of fetching interview calls from at least 2-3 colleges. Lastly, I had to give sufficient time (or at least pretend of doing so :)) to my office tasks (if you forgot, let me re-iterate I was working in Adobe Systems).

This was a real challenging situation and an acid test for my time-management skills (thought of doing some self-promotion :) ).Getting into IIM was my dream .This fact combined with the situation that I was just one stage away from bagging the coveted admission offer made me decide in favour of putting my maximum energy for GD-PI preparation of IIMs.

But this does not mean that I put the b-schools’ application on the back burner. Because I had prepared the first 2 application pretty well, I could enjoy the leeway of not toiling as hard in other applications. As mentioned in my previous post, some essays are omnipresent irrespective of the b-school and I already had the answers to such questions ready (as part of my first 2 applications’ essays). I just had to put in the delta effort to write answers to the different questions and this was no big task especially after having survived the last few weeks.

And so I started on this multitasking phase.

Before I go ahead and share my GD-PI preparation, I would like to spend few lines on which coaching to go after for GD-PI preparation.

For GD Preparation:
If you are studying/working in NCR region: For GD preparation, go for TIME coaching as they undoubtedly are the best. I did join both Career Launcher and TIME but was dismayed with the immature, useless, time-wasting and below average way of conducting GDs and associated feedback at the end of the GD given by young and often inexperienced moderators at Career Launcher. At TIME, more often than not one is handled by experienced faculty whose feedback is exactly what is required to improve oneself (this is my opinion but please do check for yourself and do not take my word as carved in stone)

If you are outside NCR region: Best would be to shift to Delhi for 2 months (take leave from office if you are working )as getting an IIM call is no mean achievement and you would not like to give a half-hearted effort towards realizing your dream. Also at Delhi/NCR centres, the quality (and quantity) of IIM call getters is very high and so the level of competition and hence the improvement in your preparation would be exponentially fast. However if you are studying in final year of graduation or cannot shift to NCR for any other reason, do research considerably as to which coaching prepares you the best for GD in your local region.

For Interview preparation
Both Career Launcher and TIME are equally good. They conduct the mock-interviews professionally and feedback is also valid. However as a candidate you need to stretch yourself and your interviewers into giving you as candid and detailed feedback as possible. Tip: Take as many mock-interviews as possible before the actual interview(s) .This will only serve to better your interview skills.

Must attend coaching for all NCR candidates
NCR candidates have an upper edge over other candidates in that they have a fantastic teacher in the form of MALAY RAY ,guiding budding CEOs to crack the IIMs interviews and GDs. Malay Ray is a pass-out of IIM Ahmedabad (I guess his batch was somewhere in middle 1990s). He takes classes in Delhi region (about 15 mins drive from Noida) and I have only one thing to say for him: Absolutely brilliant way of teaching and must attend coaching for every IIM call getter. He teaches you everything from politics to India to World affairs to Philosophy to Economics to History to General Awareness .In short he prepares the candidate not only for GD-PI of IIMs but for his life ahead.

Students wishing to contact him can leave their email Ids in the comments section of this post (along with a small introduction) and I will email you his cell number (obviously with Malay’s prior permission).

I will end this post here (followed by Advice as always) and will cover tips and techniques for GD-PI in my next post.

Advice for students contemplating to start preparation for GD-PI:

• Do understand that your GD-PI preparation starts from the day you think about CAT. Do not wait for CAT results to be out to incite you to prepare .After CAT result, you will only have 2 months (maximum) before the d-day and you can simply improve/refine what you already possess. No coaching institute can give you a magical pill. Coaching institutes can only guide you but the actual work is to be done by you only. So start now if CAT is on your radar
• Working aspirants can consider their group meetings in office as a form of GD and act accordingly .Though the actual GD scenario at IIM would be drastically different (will cover in next post) but this is a way to start
• Read non-fiction stuff as much as possible. It could be Sports or Business or xyz topic but do read. This not only helps in GD while making your points but also in Interview (and also in RC section of English in CAT written test)

My MBA Journey -Part 8 (Preparing B-school application)

As mentioned in my last post, I started working on Cambridge and Oxford applications simultaneously. Although each school offers its own application in its own format, some of the questions ("essays" in b-school jargon) more often than not do appear frequently in most of the applications (wordings of the essays could be different).

From my experience, I can vouch for the fact that knowing the answer to the question “ WHY MBA” is extremely extremely important and I have seen most of the students faltering in answering this or lacking clear vision/understanding as to why do they really need an MBA degree. Plus there are many other questions which are also important. And so it is extremely important to know the answer to each of them very clearly (that would help you in your interviews as well).

If you try to directly answer a b-school essay before doing your homework, chances are high that you will end up missing/losing some of the good points. So before starting to prepare a b-school application (or even looking at the essay questions), kindly spend sufficient time to write down in as much verbose form as possible the answers to the following questions in a word file (the more the effort and time you spend here , the better will be the quality of your application and hence higher the chances of your selection)

1. Why MBA?
2. Why now? (or why not 5 years hence or 2 years ago)
3. Why this college?
4. Why are you unique? (or why should the college select you over others)
5. What are your short/long term goals? (or where do you see 5/10 years down the line)
6. What are your 5 strengths and 5 weaknesses?
7. Detailed summary of your key accomplishments/achievements in a) academic life and b) professional life
8. 3-4 leadership experiences in a) academic life and b) professional life
9. 3-4 mistakes in professional life and the learning from them
10. ......

(The list is long and if anybody wants the entire list (with some rough answers), kindly leave your email ID in the comments section)

Frankly speaking, preparing application is a bed of nails and the biggest nut to crack in applying to a foreign b-school.

This was the phase where I spent countless hours trying to figure out who really I am. I had to go through my entire life of 25 years to pen down each and every important /not so important incident that had happened in my life. This was the time when I felt like giving up; I kept on getting frustrated but still somehow managed to survive this atrocious phase.

Once I was ready with my initial list of answers to the questions mentioned above, I started to draft the answers to the essay questions asked in Cambridge and Oxford applications. Simultaneously, I made many new friends (b-schools’ alumni) via Orkut communities, LinkedIn and other social networking sites.

I kept on sending the drafts of the essay answers to my newly made friends and I was very lucky that many of them did send back the reviewed documents in time, again and again. This process started in December 2008 and went on until Feb 2009 when I filled up my last application.

Finally after about 50 days of gruelling hard work, multiple reviews of essays, endless communication with innumerable alumni and unthinkable irritation, I was able to finish my first 2 applications. Because I had put my best foot forward in the last few weeks (at least I think so), the journey ahead (as far as the applications of the remaining schools are concerned) was not as rocky and bumpy. There were some hiccups but otherwise I was pretty comfortable with the remaining applications. And this happens with each and every candidate who does the maximum hard work in the beginning.

Tips /Advice for students in the phase of preparing applications:

• Do connect to as many alumni/current students of the b-schools you intend to apply as possible
  
• Spend as much time as possible in preparing the 1st draft of every essay question
  
• Take the review of b-schools’ alumni/current students very seriously and do incorporate it in your next draft of essay answer
  
• Pray regularly to Almighty and do interact a lot with your parents (as only they are the ones in the entire world who will give you the best advice unselfishly )

PS: All those interested in some reference material on b-schools applications (or sample b-school essays), please leave your email ID and small introduction in the comments section.

My MBA Journey –Part 7 (Selection of international B-schools)

Until I had plunged into the next phase (which I will cover in this and subsequent posts) I had not discovered the real meaning of joy, irritation and hard work all at the same time. Now onwards was starting the real journey and what preceded was only the trailer.

It was already late Nov ’09, time was running fast and I had very little time to select the list of foreign b-schools. And the decision was a key decision as it would have a long-lasting effect on my career .Also, doing an international MBA needs huge investment (see point 3 below) and as this probably would be my last degree on my resume, the decision was all the more important.

For the last 3-4 months I was constantly in touch with alumni of some of the most reputed b-schools in the world who had been kind and gentle enough to give me precious tips on selecting b-schools. Alumni tips, suggestions from my friends pursuing international MBA, learning at MBA fairs and discussions with like-minded people on various forums on net allowed me to come up with the various reasons a student looks for while selecting or prioritizing a b-school:

1) Duration of the b-school
12 months programme (such as SAID, JUDGE, INDEAD and most of the European MBA programmes)
18months programme (CEIBS, NUS etc.)
>20months programme (LBS and most of the USA universities such as Harvard, Wharton, Stanford)

2) Reputation/brand value/ranking of the b-school
Students consider various rankings such as Financial Times ranking , US News ranking, Top MBA ranking etc. to decide on the reputation of the college prevailing among aspirants, current students, alumni and the industry. Plus there are many other resources on net/outside net which could help an aspirant decipher the real brand value of the college intellectual capital wise and most importantly in terms of long-term benefits.

3) Financial burden while pursuing the MBA course (probably the most important factor of all)
As mentioned earlier that international MBA is a huge financial investment. For example, tuition fee of 2 year DUKE MBA is 100,000 US dollars i.e. around 48 lakh rupees .Add to it other expenses and total expenditure would be around 70-80 lakh. Similarly 1 year Cambridge MBA (JUDGE) costs 35 lakh (tuition fee) + accommodation +food +travel+... and total would be around 50 lakh. So think twice before you finalize on the school.

4) Location of the b-school
Some students prefer to study (and marry a firangi girl :)) in US, others prefer Europe, some like Asian colleges etc.

5) Reputation of the college in the country in which the student wants to settle down
Suppose my home country is India and I want to come back to India after 3-4 years post-MBA. In such a scenario I would prefer a University which gathers higher respect among organizations in India than say a similar or even higher ranked college (as per the Global rankings) which is relatively less known among Indian professionals in India. For example Cambridge MBA (Judge) is ranked 17th while CEIBS in China is 8th but reputation of Judge in India far exceeds that of CEIBS.

6) Other factors such as faculty reputation, course content, specializations on offer, school strength, international student diversity etc.

Based on the above factors, I was able to come up with the list of the schools I would apply to after mulling over for more than 2 weeks. I had finalized:

In Europe: Cambridge MBA (JUDGE), Oxford MBA (SAID), Cranfield, Rotterdam, Lancaster
In Asia: NUS Singapore
In Australia: Melbourne Business School

Earliest deadlines of all were of Cambridge (9th January ‘09(round 2)) and Oxford (16th January ‘09(round 2)) followed by NUS (31st Jan ’09).Cranfield, Rotterdam, Lancaster and MBS had rolling admission.

So my strategy was:

• Prepare applications for Cambridge and Oxford simultaneously
• After 16th Jan (deadline for Oxford)prepare application for NUS
• After 31st Jan (deadline for NUS) , prepare applications for rest of the colleges starting with Cranfield

I was perfect with my strategy only that I had forgotten that CAT written test results would be out on 9th Jan ’09 and if I am shortlisted for GD & PI of IIMs where the hell I would get the time from to prepare for the same.

Anyway, completely missing the above point, I went ahead to prepare my first b-school application.

Advice for students in the mode of selecting b-schools: Always prepare a list that contains 2-3 dream b-schools (schools that you would join without an iota of doubt if offered an admission) , 1-2 back-up schools(schools that you would join if not selected in any of the dream schools) and 1-2 safe schools(schools that you would definitely gain an admission into).

My MBA Journey- Part 6 (Kinds of B-schhol application processes)

Because I had kept the international b-schools’ applications preparation on hold until the CAT 2008 exam, I had taken a very serious risk. Before I discuss the risk, let me spend few lines explaining the application process to international b-schools.

There are 2 kinds of application processes

• Staged process
• Rolling process

In staged application process, the application cycle is divided into rounds and each round has a deadline. If you apply by that deadline, your application would be considered for that round otherwise it will be considered in the next round. For example, ISB Hyderabad (in India) has 2 rounds: Round 1 and Round 2.Application process for admission to session starting in April 2009, opened in July 2008.Dealines for round 1 and round 2 were 15th September 2008 and 1st December 2008 respectively, This means all the applicants applying to ISB between July and 15th September (included) would be considered in round 1 and those applying between 16th September and 1st December in round 2.

Applicants applying in earlier rounds are always at an advantage (in the above case round 1 applicants would have better chances of getting an interview call than round 2 applicants). Reasons for this are:

• There is no fixed percentage of seats that get filled up in earlier rounds i.e. if the school gets high quality of students in round 1, they might end up filling more than 50% of the total seats in this round itself. So round 2 would have less than 50% of the total seats and hence more competition in round 2
• Every b-school has fixed the percentage (not made public) of students they want to select from each category of applicant pool (IT engineers, female candidates, international students, sports persons etc.). And if a b-school happens to get the required number of students for a particular category in earlier rounds, then it is highly unlikely that a student from the already filled up category, applying in later rounds, would get selected

To make my point clearer, let’s take an example.

Suppose total number of seats available in ISB for 2009-2010 session is 500 and ISB wants to select max. of 50 IT engineers. Now say 3000 people apply in round 1 and 3000 in round 2. Of 3000 in round 1, 100 are IT engineers and same is the case for round 2.Now it so happens that ISB is impressed with the quality of the candidates in round 1 and it makes offers to 300 students (i.e more than 50% of the total seats available) of which 30 are IT enginners.So the equation for round 2 changes to 3000 students vying for 200 seats (and 100 IT engineers for 20 seats). While the situation for round 1 comes out to be 3000 students vying for 300 seats (and 100 IT engineers for 30 seats).Even if the quality of students is better in round 2, students in round 2 would have to face a stiffer competition.

So the bottom-line is “Apply in the earliest round possible”.

Other process is the Rolling process which works on the simple methodology of “first come first serve”. There is no such thing as “rounds”. For example applicant applying on ,say, 3rd December will get his application decision earlier than someone who applied on 15th December who in turn would get the decision earlier than the 25th December applicant.

That means in both the processes, applying as early as possible ensures a better chance of getting an interview call/selection.

Few examples of b-schools following different models are (especially mentioned for curious minds :) ):
ISB (staged with 2 rounds)
NUS (2 rounds with rolling approach within each round)
SAID/JUDGE/INSEAD (staged with 4 rounds)
Cranfield/Lancaster/Rotterdam/MBS (rolling process)

Now I return to the risk I had mentioned in the 2nd line of this post. It was already November 2008 and since the application process for admission to the 2009 fall session had already started in September-October 2008 timeframe, I had missed the 1st round of almost all the foreign b-schools. And similarly for schools with rolling admission, I was getting late.

Not to talk of the fact that I had not started preparing my applications (biggest challenge in applying to a foreign-GMAT based b-school) which easily takes 2-3 months depending on the number of schools one is applying to and number of essays per application. To make the situation worse, I had not zeroed in on the b-schools I would apply to (which I realized later to be an extensive time taking task).

All this pertain to the fact that if I put my best foot forward I could be able to apply earliest by January 2009 and that means I would be placed in round 2 or round 3 of the b-school and obviously too late for rolling-admission based schools.

With no choice, I started on my next leg of the journey: selecting the b-schools.

PS: My advice for aspirants taking GMAT is to make sure you take GMAT early enough to have sufficient time to prepare and submit your applications in round 1 itself (Most of the schools have 1st round deadlines in late September/early October for classes starting in the fall next year)

My MBA Journey- Part 5 (Strategy for 2nd CAT attempt)

After deciding that I would take the CAT again, I had to come up with a plan to prepare for CAT 2008 which was just over 3 months away. This time aorund,I had the luxury of CAT 2007 and GMAT experience(which I had taken barely few days ago).

I believe every CAT aspirant is weak in some areas and strong in others and so the preparation strategy would change based on the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses.
Two common mistakes which many candidates make while preparing/taking CAT are:
1) Blindly following the approach/strategy of a candidate who has already been successful in cracking the CAT in the past
2) Sticking to a FIXED strategy to solve any format of the CAT exam (CAT conductors change the exam format practically every year which takes majority of CAT takers with surprise .FYI…In GMAT format is fixed )

In CAT 2008 though I did not commit the first mistake, I was not lucky to have not committed the second one. My strategy was to devote equal time to all the 3 sections in the CAT paper irrespective of the number of questions, difficult level of the questions etc. and this cost me 3 IIM calls. Because CAT 2008 had 25, 25 and 40 questions (40 in English); it was needed to devote more time to English section vis-à-vis DI and Quant.

So 2 cents of advice to all the CAT aspirants “Listen to successful CAT candidates but form your own strategy which should be customizable at the run time depending on the format of the paper”

Now coming back to how I prepared for the exam.
Though everyone knows it but still I want to re-iterate the golden rule : The better your preparation is, the better would be the results.
Keeping in mind that I did not have the luxury of ample time, I followed the following approach:

1) I ensured to take mock CAT every Sunday (TIME coaching tests are the best followed by Career Launcher followed by IMS) and analyze the answers of each and every question in the paper irrespective of whether I attempted the question or not. This had helped me in
a) knowing the method to solve a question which I could not solve during the exam time
b) understanding the correct way to solve a question which I had incorrectly solved
c) learning the better /faster way to solve a question which I had correctly solved
d) and most important of all : Designing a strategy to improve the sectional and overall score
2) As I was aware that my weakest area was English and strongest was DI, I spent maximum time preparing English followed by Quant followed by DI
3) Did not do any coaching though used both the Career Launcher’s and TIME material to prepare on my own. I personally feel going to coaching for preparation is a waist of time. These coaching institutes provide very good material and anyone could study on his own.
FYI…. Career Launchers’ material is better than TIME’s in terms of content but TIME’s material is more organized and hence I read some chapters from TIME’s and some from Career Launcher’s books
4) Made sure to study around 6-8 hrs per week initially and then increased the time to 10-12 hrs per week towards closer to the exam date.

I followed the said approach and kept on taking mock CATs. Scores in mock CAT used to vary drastically and I could not see any pattern among the scores of various weeks. My percentile ranged from 89 to 99+ in 3 months but every single time the bottleneck used to be English. Hence I was pretty clear that English would be the deciding factor in the real exam and it turned out to be the same.

On the 3rd Sunday of November, I was yet again face to face with the monster .I came back home after riding the Tiger, in the evening checked the answers of Quant and DI but did not have the courage to check English answers .Still I was pretty sure that I had goofed up big time in English and left everything to destiny.

Now I had 2 mammoth tasks again awaiting me:
1) Long wait till 9th January 2009 when the results of CAT would be out
2) International b-school applications’ preparation

And so I continued once again on my long journey…………….

My MBA Journey - Part 4 (Why GMAT or Why CAT)

After I was done with my GMAT, I had 2 options in front of me: either to start preparing applications for international b-schools or to prepare for CAT and after that prepare applications. I went with the former option.

An obvious question that might arise in the minds of readers is why did I take both CAT and GMAT? Now this needs a long explanation and perhaps the most important answer every aspirant needs to have crystal clear before he/she takes any of the said examinations.

During last year I had talked to over 200 people: some CAT/GMAT aspirants, some alumni of B-schools (both Indian and International schools), current students of various B-schools etc. In my discussions I came to know of various reasons why anyone prefers one examination to the other or in other words why does someone not like to take GMAT or CAT.

A GMAT aspirant has one or more of these factors in mind because of which he prefers GMAT to CAT:

1) Opportunity for international exposure which has a strong demand in industry and which you will not get in IIMs and other Indian colleges (exchange programs in Indian colleges are for only 3-4 months and I personally feel that does not do significant addition towards increasing international management effectiveness)
2) Heavy pay package after MBA which would be in dollars in Uncle Sam’s state and in pounds in UK (and we Indians are very good at saving a lot of money. Indian IT engineers who have had the chance to go onsite would grasp my point easily :))
3) Strong acceptance of US/UK MBAs in almost every nook and corner of the world( very few people outside India know about IIMs and those who know there understanding is limited mostly to IIM Ahmedabd .Many people would feel shell-shocked reading this but this is the truth. Even in other Asian countries such as Singapore, industry would prefer graduates from global b-schools (having ranked in top 100 b-schools of the world) which might stand no where against IIMs and where admission is also relatively easier vis-à-vis cracking CAT)
4) Easier to gain an admission to international b-schools (for most US and European b-schools acceptance rate varies from 8% to 40% with top 10 colleges having the rate toward the lower side of the range. Even the likes of Harvard/Columbia/Wharton/Insead/LBS (top 5 colleges in the world (Source: http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-rankings ) have acceptance rate of around 9-10%. And now consider IIMs. In 2008, around 2 lakh 50 thousand students took the exam for 1800 total seats in 7 IIMs i.e. acceptance rate of less than 1%. Pheewwwwww)

And these are the factors a CAT (or shall I say an IIM) aspirant has in his/her mind:

1) Dynamite brand value of IIMs in India (I have talked to HRs/industry professionals of various organizations and the revelation was mind-boggling. In India in more often than not cases an IIM pass-out would be preferred over pass-outs of say world’s top 15+ colleges. Even a graduate of world’s top 10 colleges would not be considered too high when compared to IIMs graduates)
2) You need only peanuts to do an MBA from IIMs (tuition fee of IIMs lie in the range of 7-12 lakhs whereas tuition fess of top 10 US two year MBA programs lie in the range of 40 to 60 lakhs .Add to this living expenses + other expenses and you would be required to shell out some 70 to 80 lakhs only. I believe compared to this figure IIMs are charging only peanuts :). Taking GMAT exam itself would cost around 12000 INR (CAT costs around 1500 INR))
3) People with less experience (0 – 2 years) can not get an admission in international b-schools easily (Most of the foreign b-schools have set the minimum work experience limit as 2 years. IIMs would not mind if you are a fresher though some IIMs such as IIM Lucknow and IIM Bangalore have of late started to build work experience requirement into the selection procedure. But still percentage of students with 0-2 years of experience in IIMs is pretty high)
4) And finally if you are coming from the worst cohort in the world, Indian IT Male, you are doomed. Every foreign b-school and even ISB have a strong averseness for this privileged community and some colleges have even placed a limit on the maximum number of students they will hire from this elite community. So safe haven for members of this group is IIMs where majority of the students are from this group only. (Btw if you were thinking about the most sought after candidates in phoren b-schools and even in Indian b-schools: your guess is as good as mine:))

Now after so much gyan, I can answer why I chose to give both GMAT and CAT. Because
1) I wanted to do an MBA desperately this year as I had already got an ultimatum from my family that I would be sentenced for life ( I am referring to marriage) if I don’t get an admission in a b-school this year
2) I wanted to stay and work in India (so GMAT could work as my back-up if I don’t get into IIMs)
3) This reason is personal :)

And so I started my CAT preparation.

My MBA Journey -Part 3 (GMAT strategy)

Having bitten by the desi “Billi”, I moved on to tame the phoren “Billi”: GMAT (I wonder what is so sacrosanct about the usage of “AT” in every MBA exam such as XAT, CAT, NMAT, GMAT…..)

Before I move on, I would like to clear some of the myths doing the rounds among MBA aspirants regarding GMAT.

Myth 1: GMAT is an entirely different exam from CAT
AA: GMAT and CAT test patterns do differ but the preparation done for CAT is always useful for GMAT and vice-versa.

Myth 2: GMAT English is tougher than CAT's
AA: English section in GMAT is tough but Verbal Ability section in CAT is the real BAAP.

Myth 3: In general GMAT is a very tough exam and scoring 700+ is one hell of a task.
AA: GMAT is very easy vis-à-vis CAT .If you could score 99+ in CAT, you could definitely score 750+ in GMAT but not the other way round.

GMAT is a timed test based on Computer Adaptive Test technology (For more information visit http://www.mba.com/mba/thegmat/teststructureandoverview). For this very reason, approach taken to crack the test is different from CAT’s approach. However, GMAT is a very student friendly exam unlike CAT. Best thing about GMAT is that the test format is fixed hence you could work out on a strategy easily .Upfront knowledge of number of questions , type of questions , allotted time etc. makes this exam considerable easy to score high.

In addition to the 3 tools (mentioned in my earlier post) to tame the CAT, one more thing is needed for GMAT and indeed a very important one: STAMINA to sit in front of the computer screen for 4 hrs .Being an IT chap really helped me here as I was already accustomed to sitting in front of the computer screen for hours (that is a different matter that I just used to keep on sitting and doing nothing).

With the prestigious tag of CAT taker :) behind me, I started my GMAT preparation after a good long break (as though I was going on a battle) in 2008. My preparation went for 2.5 months for around 6-7 hrs of study per week .90% of my preparation was devoted to English section as this was the section which tortured me like anything (Maths in GMAT is halua .All engineers just mug up the formulae and are good to go).

During these 2.5 months, I gave innumerable mock-tests with the scores varying from 570 to 760 .In the second last test that I took 5 days before the actual exam date; I scored 570 and as a consequence lost all my confidence and was nearly sure of adding another feather to my cap 5 days down the line.

I was so disappointed that I even thought of cancelling my appointment. But numerous posts on GMATclub (forum for GMAT preparation) suggested not going by the scores of just any online test, rather relying on the GMATprep (official mock-test from GMAT authorities) which is considered to be the most accurate indicator of one's performance. 4 days before the actual exam, I took GMAT Prep and scored 760 .Once again, my faith was restored, brain muscles got stronger, blood started flowing rapidly and once again I was back in confidence.

Finally, the D-day came and I waited nervously after the exam ended for the score (Yes, your score comes in GMAT as soon as you finish the exam). And finally I could return home peacefully with a paper in my hands with 750 printed on it.

My MBA Journey - Part 2 (Mistakes made and learning from the 1st CAT attempt)

With the goal clear in my mind that I needed to increase my market value :), the next big challenge was to decide on the exam: GMAT or CAT or in other terms whether phoren MBA or desi? Again this proved to be a mammoth task (though realized later that this difficulty was nothing vis-à-vis selecting phoren b-schools and making their applications. After doing my research I decided that I will be taking both the exams as pattern is similar for both CAT and GMAT (again I was wrong :)).

I decided to go for CAT first. By the time I made up mind, it was already August 2007 and I noticed that only 1 day was left to buy the CAT 2007 form. Panicking, I rushed to the nearest bank but to my bad luck the forms had been all sold. Thereafter I rushed to Delhi and finally after 4 long hrs in a queue I won the battle and emerged with the CAT form as if I had won an Olympic gold. Believe me the feeling was unparalleled 

Now the next task was to join a coaching institute for the CAT preparation which was a fairly simple task .There are only 2 reputed coaching centers in Noida and around: TIME and Career Launcher and I joined the test series of one of them (it really doesn’t matter which centre you join. All give you pretty much the same material).

Next 1 month saw me giving a mock-CAT test every Sunday and saw my percentile hovering between 85 and 99.There I made a discovery (and indeed a right one) that CAT is a very treacherous exam and it can ditch you any day. You can score 99+ one day and next day you might end up in 80s.This is in direct contrast with GMAT (which I will discuss in my next blog(s)).

Demoralized that CAT was not my cup of tea and no matter how much I studied I would not get through, I spent my next 2 months only taking tests on Sundays, analyzing the solutions and studying roughly only around 3-4 hrs per week and that too without any enthusiasm .And hence on 3rd Sunday of November 2007 (I went with a free mind) and the result as guessed was positive. I didn’t get through.

One of my biggest mistakes here was that though I discovered the erratic nature of CAT pretty early in my preparation, I interpreted it wrongly. CAT obviously is very unpredictable and no amount of preparation can ensure an IIM call .But there has to be something to Bell The CAT .And indeed , the answer is yes .There are 3 things which are needed and slogging out and burning the midnight oil is definitely not one of them (this I understood only after September 2008 when I started preparing for the CAT the second time).

So the 3 magical (or alteast understood to be so) things needed are:

1)Right aptitude
2)Wise strategy
3)Decent amount of preparation (spanning 3-4 months) to come to terms with the different types of questions in CAT and most importantly to devise a useful and customized strategy.

Yes , this is true in about 4 months of preparation anyone and I repeat anyone could crack the most feared of the MBA exams in the world. And believe me, this I am saying from my experience.

Those who don’t believe me watch out this space for my next post.

My MBA journey -Part1 (Why MBA )

It's been a long 2 years since I started my MBA preparation. After my engineering ,I was amused seeing so many of my peers, seniors and even juniors going into one or the other top b-schools .This made me wonder what is so special about this word "MBA".

Researching, talking to alumni and prospective students and goggling threw many reasons/facts listed below (in no order):

1) Big Moolah
2) Enhanced career prospects in the same function/industry
3) Current job/industry sucks so need to change (especially true of IT guys :) )
4) MBA would provide opportunities for networking
5) Blah blah blah

Pondering over the list, I thought what shall be my reason for doing an MBA.I thought and thought and finally came up with an answer (though this took me 1 year) .I took 1 more year to mentally prepare myself that I really needed an MBA .External conditions/factors especially those beyond one's control do influence a lot if you want to make an important decision and this indeed was the case with me. But the point is after 2 years of introspection and circumspection and retrospection and all other spections :), I finally made a call to prepare for one of the most coveted degrees (at least this is what I thought at that time).

How I prepared, what did I do, nitty-gritty of GMAT/CAT, what were the failures/setbacks etc. would be covered in the subsequent blogs.

India's Enron

2008 has been an eventful year with newspaper dailies overflowing with content around the globe. Be it the economic meltdown, Barack Obama’s win in the US presidential elections or the worst terror strike India has ever seen, the events of the last year have changed millions of live, some directly and some indirectly. However, the event that has really influenced my thinking has been the recent fraud exposed at the Indian IT giant Satyam Computers. Being an Indian Information Technology professional, the fraud seems so much closer to me than any other event could ever be.

In one of the biggest frauds in India's corporate history, B. Ramalinga Raju, founder and Chairman of Satyam Computers, India's fourth-largest IT services firm, announced on January 7 that his company had been falsifying its accounts for years, overstating revenues and inflating profits by $1 billion. This is particularly ironic since just three months ago; Satyam received a Golden Peacock award for Excellence in Corporate Governance from London-based World Council for Corporate Governance.

This incident is like an eye opener for me and an early lesson on how corporate governance can make or break corporations and with it, the lives of those associated with these corporations. Corporate governance as the name suggests is a system of governance to administer, control and orient the management activities towards the interests of shareholders and other stakeholders.

History of the corporate world shows many instances of the failure of “Corporate Governance”. The Satyam incident in particular deserves attention for a number of reasons including the fact that it is the first of its kind (in scale) in India. When the news broke out, it really made me think about key aspects of corporate governance, why companies indulge in such acts and what are the different measures regulatory agencies and governments have taken to ensure that such acts of financial malfeasance do not occur.

Corporate governance emerged as the new focus among corporates across the world post 2001, when, what was touted as the biggest corporate scandals in the business history - the” Enron Scandal” was unearthed .Enron Corporation was a leading American energy company until it was revealed that the firm's success turned out to have involved an elaborate scam. Enron misrepresented its accounting numbers and was accused of being involved in a range of fraudulent practices, including concealing debts so they didn't show up in the company's accounts. As the depth of the deception unfolded, investors and creditors retreated, forcing the firm to declare bankruptcy. The accounting fraud at Enron, initiated by its senior executives including CEO out of their personal greed at the expense of their employees and the American public, is considered a landmark case in the field of business fraud .This scandal brought into question the accounting practices of many corporations throughout the United States. Such was the societal effects of this scandal that there were cases of striking parallels being drawn between September 11 attacks on the USA and the collapse of Enron.

Along the lines of Enron is the Satyam fraud where Satyam's chairman admitted in a letter addressed to the market regulator Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI) that he was involved in tampering the account books to create fictitious assets. What makes Satyam’s case even more disturbing is that it was listed on New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) which mandates a higher level of governance.
Satyam, which ironically means "truth" in Sanskrit, has dealt a severe blow to the pristine image of business in post-reform India which has not only impacted brand India and the IT sector, it could also impact the capital flows into the country. Satyam fraud branded as the largest corporate fraud in Indian history could not have come at a worse time for corporate India. With the world economy facing a recession, caused by the US subprime crisis, and growth in India slowing, this crisis impacting one of the biggest Indian software companies could have devastating impact on the Indian economy.

It is indeed unfortunate that the same Information Technology (IT) sector in India which holds the distinction of advancing the country into the new-age economy is in the news for all the wrong reasons. It is a well known fact that the success of Information Technology in India post-economic reforms in 1991 not only had economic repercussions but also had far-reaching political consequences. India's reputation both as a source and a destination for skilled workforce helped it improve its relations with a number of world economies. The Satyam scandal has raised a serious question-mark on the credibility of IT outsourcing services being offered by India which constitute more than 65% of IT outsourcing and around 45% of ITES share of the world’s market. As India's IT firms handle sensitive financial information for some of the world's largest enterprises, there could be an impact on the trend of outsourcing to India.

All of this makes me wonder how individuals involved in such frauds can be so selfish and avoid seeing the far reaching impact their actions can have on other people sometimes even nations. Massive scams like these apart from affecting the economy have serious consequences on the innocent-stakeholders who suffer for apparently no fault of theirs. Thousands of Enron employees and investors lost all their savings and pensions when Enron collapsed. Similarly, Satyam shareholders took a direct hit as the company's share price crashed 77% on the day its Chairman made the mind-boggling confession. And not to talk of the 53000 Satyam employees, barring any miracle, most of these people would lose their jobs. With the IT sector hit hard by the economic downturn in the United States, and the other big three Indian IT giants (TCS, Wipro and Infosys) dealing with layoffs of their own, there is not much appetite to accommodate any of the 53,000 employees. As an employee, even the thought of finding me in such a situation is disturbing.

Another aspect which I believe has not found support yet is the impact of this fraud on the various social and philanthropic causes associated with Satyam. For instance, The Byrraju foundation, an initiative by Chairman Raju is a huge project involving 200 villages and covering one million people, according to reports. Similarly there are around 1/2 million homeless children who are in Satyam foundation camp and under care indirectly. With Satyam future itself not clear, projects like these are bound to suffer and that will impact heavily the millions of lives dependent on them.

Now all these things raise a very important and critical question: What triggers such kind of financial skullduggery? I believe there are several reasons for this to happen. What happened in the case of Enron or Bernard Madoff (who orchestrated a US $50 investor fraud) is a clear cut indication of greed where senior management not only tried to escape the sinking ship but also made sure they made the most money off it in a clear insider trading. However Satyam episode reveals one more factor: immense pressure on companies to maintain their financial performance. But I believe that whatever be the reason, financial cleverness is no substitute for a good corporate strategy.

While upholding ethical values is the primary responsibility of the individual, scams like the Satyam fraud also indicate failure of all the checks and balances on corporate governance: board of directors, external accounting firm, market regulator, Stock Exchange, and ultimately the press.

Satyam failure very clearly shows that the involvement of the board was at the strategic level while it is the founder who is the real power-centre. This renders the board practically ineffective. I believe that this calls for a change in the ownership structure which involves the separation of the Chairman and CEO posts. However as per a recent data, out of the 30 companies that constitute the Sensex, the benchmark share index of the Bombay Stock Exchange, only 19 have split the positions of the chairman and the CEO. Even if some companies that have split the roles, the division of powers is merely cosmetic as both the roles are played by the members of the promoter family such as seen in the Satyam case. This basically defeats the purpose of a regulation enacted by the Securities and Exchange Board of India that calls for an increase in the number of independent directors serving on the boards of large Indian companies. Here Indian companies could take a cue from Europe and the UK where splitting of the roles is considered the bulwark of corporate governance.

Also the regulator’s role is very critical in preventing such scams as the regulator is the ultimate authority on managing to check frauds by setting up required checks and balances. Satyam scam puts the focus on whether there is enough oversight in all of the publicly traded companies. If this thing can happen in what was until recently a much respected company that boasts of a clientele including 150 of the Fortune 500 companies, it could very well happen in any other company.

Though the authorities around the world have taken strict measures to protect shareholders and the general public from accounting errors and fraudulent practices in the enterprise, massive financial frauds keep on happening time and again. One such measure was the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, a legislation enacted in response to the high-profile Enron financial scandal. This Act covers range of issues such as auditor independence and corporate governance and is considered one of the landmark acts passed in the US.

One of my key learnings from this incident is that business is not only about growth or accumulating wealth and status. It is about being a good corporate citizen. This is the model to follow for any corporate operating in any part of the world.

At the same time, I have understood that although non-ethical business practices might tender some short-term gains but to grow in long-term, high emphasis on corporate governance is critical .This is the thing which makes difference between companies like Infosys, well-known for its integrity and companies like Satyam who are on the verge of collapse. I can now see the value addition in even small steps taken by companies such as Adobe etc. to garner a work-culture operating with the highest ethical standards.