How do you become the best business school in any country? Is it by concentrating on the quality of students graduating out of the school? Or is it by concentrating on the kind of students that enter your business school.
There is nothing wrong with that; the students that enter a top business school ought to deserve being there. They need to be the crème-de-la-crème of the entire applying lot to be at premier business institutions and become future managers of prestigious businesses. However, are we sure that the selection processes in business schools really sift the deserving from the not-deserving? I am guessing no. Many business schools select students on the basis of their profiles which will benefit them (the school) later in their placements; higher placements mean higher ranking of the school. However, not reason enough to select a great manager in the making.
CAT or the Common Admission Test is supposedly one of the most difficult and competitive test you would have to take if you plan to be an MBA. Many take it for years together before cracking it finally. They slog, burn the midnight oil (sometimes thrice over) before they are able to get that coveted percentile. However, wasn’t CAT supposed to be a logical test? Logic not developed by slogging but inherent to a person.
The Group Discussion and the Personal Interview: The candidates who finally convert a call for admission have an academic background to kill for and in some cases work experience in the social sector. This aspect of the decision making process by the schools is so known-to-all that candidates have devised methods to play around it. They join an NGO at such a time that they get the work experience without their interviewers getting the hint of their ‘philanthropic’ intentions. A good academic background is not indicative of a good manager; it’s only indicative of a person who knows how to work his way through the rote-learning based academic system. Candidates prepare for the interviews too at length and only few of them in real life are different from their rehearsed counterparts.
I am not trying to put down anybody who got an admission in an MBA college; it was no mean feat and one you should be proud of. However, the admission process for MBA colleges has gone repetitive and should be revised. The catch is to sift out the managers from the MBA aspirants.
Tags: admissions, CAT, ranking, selection process
