As all MBA aspirants would do, I used to read a lot about IIMA aka WIMWI....And I didnt restrict it to merely the eye popping salaries they earned. It was the first year that interested me.
A lot of PGP students had written extensively about it and made it seem like hell. Average number of minutes slept was around 300,and similar statistics were bandied about. A lot of it was not really comparable or worthy similar to what is being done at IRMA (premier rural management institute....yeah...we dont compare ourselves with development institutions and vehemently deny being a management institute....so whom do we compare ourselves with??? :))
What is official is the number of case studies these guys do.300 in the first year and 250 in the second year. And a full case is something that I have read (IIMA is the academic mother of IRMA, NDDB being the financial father....pardon my gender insensitivity at making the money giving institute the father)...And if we extend the amount of time required to read the stuff, analyse it and then present it in the class 5 hours of daily sleep is something that seems believable.
I loved the feeling of being pushed to the wall.I felt the same would happen at IRMA...But alas....
All I saw was tacit agreements on going easy, quizzes being postponed and so on and so forth....
The faculty seems resigned to the fact this batch is like NAIRU...no use pushing it...and we have happily accepted that fact...
The academic rigour has been diluted...I fear...And everyone has to be blamed for it.
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I come from a college where pursuing a course in MBA is still scoffed at. No matter how rural your course might be.
It was in IRMA that i understood to an extent how being "a jack of all trades" indeed has its own virtues.
One year ago, had I read your mail, I would have wondered how an individual could like being "pushed" by extrinsic factors such as course pressure etc. Case studies, frankly seemed a load of BS.
I realise now that education in the previous institution was aimed at making a researcher out of me. this place is supposedly for managers.
There used to be minimal pressere there from the faculties. It was a "pull" system if i could say so, rather than a "push" system.
But, one thing starkly different was the prioritising that the students did.
The priority could include academic excellence too. but, not necessarily.
What I find strangely missing here, and I include myself in the list, is the lack of prioritising.
We failed miserably in prioritising. and making sure there is a consensus in the priorities, at least a functional consensus.
I take the blame.
Well, to a certain extent this does resonate with my thoughts. However, I fear that all the hype created around "WIMWI" is precisely that - "hype". I have seen WIMWIANs from very close quarters and I doubt if things are really that rigorous on campus. Another fact is that most of them come from IITs and other elite academic institutions where the academic rigour makes them adopt a particular kind of lifestyle (staying up late, drugs, liquor et all). Certainly the rigour might be slightly more in WIMWI but, it has more to do with the discipline and strictness imposed by the faculties and less to do with the quality of academic material. Not to mention, the quality of students certainly matches with the rigour. Same rigour if imposed in IRMA, I fear not many of us would be able to sustain.
I also agree with Nidhi and Nitin......I certainly had many expectations when i landed in IRMA campus....but after term 1.....i started to have severe cognitive dissonance.....i dont know why or who was responsible for that.....but looking at the way system worked....papers on lan and same papers (repeating just to give an example)...somehow started to made me feel that the academic rigour which could be expected from a top most B school was somewhat lacking.......anyways as we were taught in MAC....we shouldnt try to change the matters outside our sphere of influence......take the best of whatever you can and put your best efforts in it.....thats the mantra of my life
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