Phew……I have just finished writing the first draft of the first essay for my MBA admissions, and let me tell you, it isn’t easy. Yah, sure, I write verbose and tome-like blogs, and I say writing a 250-300 word essay is difficult? But really, it’s very difficult, not so much for the want of material to speak about, but because of the want of space to accommodate all that material. A MBA essay is not so much an essay as a marriage proposal! Ok, maybe that was a wee bit overdone, but you get the point. Now I know why MBAs get paid so much; they should be able to do their marketing even before they are in college!
Indian colleges, with some notable exceptions like Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi, generally tend to rely primarily on examination scores (e.g. CAT, XAT, JMET, etc.), and leave the process of gauging the candidate to the Personal Interview rounds. After having given the GMAT, I have come to feel that such a system (the Indian model) is somewhat biased against those who somehow do not manage to get a good score, but may have the potential to be good managers and leaders. After all, a usually great performer may not perform, for some reasons, on the day of the CAT/XAT/JMET exam and may fare badly, but surely that doesn’t mean anything vis-à-vis his/her overall ability. I know many people in my peer group who are capable of being great leaders, but who simply couldn’t clear these exams.
I read once in a newspaper article that the Indian model is so because it’s a model of ‘admission by elimination’, whereas the overseas model is more of a ‘admission by selection’ model. Now, even if your GMAT score may not be in the range of 700-750 out of 800, you still stand a decent, if not great, chance of getting into a good MBA school with a decent scholarship.
So the point is, the Indian model seems flawed and there’s need to improvise. But the question then arises: do we have sufficient colleges and time to actually sift through so many applications of so many candidates in India? I guess not. So it’s best to stay with what is working. As some one said, don’t try to fix something that isn’t broken.
I have still some 12-15 essays to write, so the celebration's premature...but the beginning calls for a small one, no?
