Its already May and I have just two posts this year. This is not acceptable. What am I up to? I don't know.
There have been so much going on that it might take a fortune of words to write. But a quick summary of whatever I remember since I last wrote -
* Interviews for internships - Unsuccessful at many, success at a couple. Eventually, something did work out and I am hoping it would be a great experience
* Finishing first year of MBA - Projects, assignments, study groups, and the regular stuff. The good thing was that I got a chance to work with so many different people in the past few months.
* Trips to Princeton, Atlantic City, Niagara Falls, Philadelphia - This was definitely one of the highlights and does warrant a separate post. I really enjoyed visiting these places of course with Tanu. In the process, we celebrated our first wedding anniversary and my birthday.
* Farewell, Parties at school - This is a regular feature thought not the farewell (it only comes once). It was fun. Desi party and dance and drinks makes an awesome deal.
There were definitely more memories, more events, and more happenings during last few months but these were the main ones that immediately come to my mind.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
1:38 PM EST, West Windsor, NJ
Sitting in a Starbucks cafe in a upscale but still developing mall. Spending a couple of hours in the cafe, the next couple at Barnes and Noble. Then sometime on window shopping. And yes, finishing my To-Do must reads, catching up with the lost sleep and so on. I am trying to make the most of my break before I start with my internship next week.
The last few months were tough, and I mean really tough. With the economy in its worst phase since the Great Depression, it taught me a good lesson or rather I should say it clearly showed what it means to be looking for a job in this turmoil. Not just for me, but for my friends, colleagues, and everyone in the school - it was a difficult time. But hope doesn't die. And even when there would be many who would be graduating without jobs, hope is something which would keep everyone including myself (Yes - I still have a Full-Time job to look for next year) alive and kicking.
I am definitely looking forward to working next week. I believe it would be a very different environment for me. From a company with 100,000+ people to a company with around 200 people. It would definitely be a different world. In fact, I had once worked in a project with peak team size of 120 - I am guessing it would be a similar experience. Just that instead of project in a huge company, I would be working with the entire company itself.
Will hopefully post some posts regarding my internship experiences.
Sitting in a Starbucks cafe in a upscale but still developing mall. Spending a couple of hours in the cafe, the next couple at Barnes and Noble. Then sometime on window shopping. And yes, finishing my To-Do must reads, catching up with the lost sleep and so on. I am trying to make the most of my break before I start with my internship next week.
The last few months were tough, and I mean really tough. With the economy in its worst phase since the Great Depression, it taught me a good lesson or rather I should say it clearly showed what it means to be looking for a job in this turmoil. Not just for me, but for my friends, colleagues, and everyone in the school - it was a difficult time. But hope doesn't die. And even when there would be many who would be graduating without jobs, hope is something which would keep everyone including myself (Yes - I still have a Full-Time job to look for next year) alive and kicking.
I am definitely looking forward to working next week. I believe it would be a very different environment for me. From a company with 100,000+ people to a company with around 200 people. It would definitely be a different world. In fact, I had once worked in a project with peak team size of 120 - I am guessing it would be a similar experience. Just that instead of project in a huge company, I would be working with the entire company itself.
Will hopefully post some posts regarding my internship experiences.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
IIMs and Financial Times MBA Rankings
I recently had an interesting conversation regarding why supposedly the best business schools of India - IIMs do not figure anywhere in the global Top-100 MBA rankings. I said - IIMs would perhaps not figure in global rankings unless they change the system. Here are the reasons I think it might be difficult for IIMs to crack the global rankings -
- The admission process itself is messed up to some extent with reservations, and there is no doubt that admission process is an important factor in the rankings
- IIMs do not accept GMAT, which means that the students can not be benchmarked against students from other global schools
- Also, the average work experience in IIMs is 1-2 years (as compared to 4-5 years in other global schools)
- This also leads to lower salaries post MBA which brings IIM down in rankings (although while calculating the rankings they usually just take the % difference in before and after salaries, but I think a more inexperienced class of IIMs will have an impact on final rankings)
Personally, I believe that IIM students have excellent analytical horsepower and intelligence in. However, they can work more on enhancing their soft skills, and IIMs can definitely steer the students in the right direction. I believe that to be a successful in the corporate world, at the end of the day, soft skills matter more than hard skills. - maybe a 60% to 40% distribution.
By the way, FT rankings are also skewed for some parameters, like salary differences pre and post MBA etc. and some institutes do stand to benefit from it. I personally take all the rankings with a pich of salt - "Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital."
I recently had an interesting conversation regarding why supposedly the best business schools of India - IIMs do not figure anywhere in the global Top-100 MBA rankings. I said - IIMs would perhaps not figure in global rankings unless they change the system. Here are the reasons I think it might be difficult for IIMs to crack the global rankings -
- The admission process itself is messed up to some extent with reservations, and there is no doubt that admission process is an important factor in the rankings
- IIMs do not accept GMAT, which means that the students can not be benchmarked against students from other global schools
- Also, the average work experience in IIMs is 1-2 years (as compared to 4-5 years in other global schools)
- This also leads to lower salaries post MBA which brings IIM down in rankings (although while calculating the rankings they usually just take the % difference in before and after salaries, but I think a more inexperienced class of IIMs will have an impact on final rankings)
Personally, I believe that IIM students have excellent analytical horsepower and intelligence in. However, they can work more on enhancing their soft skills, and IIMs can definitely steer the students in the right direction. I believe that to be a successful in the corporate world, at the end of the day, soft skills matter more than hard skills. - maybe a 60% to 40% distribution.
By the way, FT rankings are also skewed for some parameters, like salary differences pre and post MBA etc. and some institutes do stand to benefit from it. I personally take all the rankings with a pich of salt - "Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital."
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