MBA

 

Introduction:

 

Master of Business Administration is a hotshot career today. There has been much of hype. All the MNC’s are chasing skilled Graduates. Oh! Does that sound great?

OK! So we decided to bring you the information about ‘How to be an MBA’, best in our limits.

 

Insight:

 

MBA, originally gained grounds in United States to give the aspiring candidates a complete overview of the Business and its operation and to be a successful Businessman.

 Coming to the Indian scenario, Marwari’s  were and are considered to be the born Businessman’s. And it’s true to an extent. But, in the era of evolution and stiff competition, we also have to sharpen our skills to make a road map on a Global scale.

MBA is a modern tool which will equip you with latest techniques and methods to do Business. It provides you with an edge to compete and to prosper your business. So what are you waiting for? Wanna be armed with an MBA?       

Once again think about it!!

 

So you want to be an MBA ?

 

You're not alone! The MBA    Master of Business Administration   is one of the most coveted post graduate qualifications across the world. Graduates of all types   engineers, science, arts, commerce, doctors   aspire to this qualification. The reason is clear   an MBA is the most widely recognized and respected qualification in management and business, and a launching pad to a successful career. It is never too late to get an MBA   some choose to do it immediately after graduation, some work for a few years and then go back to school.

As with all good things, it is not easy to get admission an MBA programme at a top college (whether in India or overseas). Highly competitive admission tests, followed by a stringent personality assessment cum interview process, make MBA admission a really tough task.

 

Are you eligible ?

 

You need to have a bachelor's degree (3 year course) or equivalent in any discipline recognized by any Indian University / AICTE as eligible for post graduate studies.

You can apply while you are in your final year of graduation. If you do get through the admission test, you will be given provisional admission on the condition that you provide your mark sheet and a certificate of passing by a certain date.

 

The Admission Process

 

India
The most sought after institutes have their own independent admission processes.
However, all of them have a 2 stage process:

• Stage 1: Written admission test.
  Multiple choice tests in math’s, verbal, reading, logic & business awareness conducted in centers across India.
  Read more about specific admission tests
• Stage 2: Personality Assessment
  Those who qualify through Stage 1 normally proceed to two stages of personality assessment:
  Group Discussion: Your performance in a group, while discussing a topic of current importance, is evaluated by a panel of judges.
  Personal Interview: You are interviewed by a panel of specialists. 

US & Europe
The basic qualifying exam for doing an MBA outside India (US, Europe, Australasia) is the GMAT (Graduate Management Aptitude Test) conducted in centers across India.

After you get your GMAT results, you need to apply for admission to specific institutes. There is normally no GD or Personal Interview process (like in India)   however, different institutes have different processes and criteria for admitting students.

 

Tips: Try to give exams like CAT, XAT, CET and MAT. Most of the colleges fall under these exam codes.

TOP COLLEGES

 

The most coveted colleges to pursue an MBA in India are the 6 IIMs (now going to be 7), and the courses offered by another dozen or so leading schools. All of them have an excellent track record in offering high quality education, and students from these institutes get the pick of corporate and management jobs directly from campus. Apart from these premier institutes, there are several other colleges that offer an MBA degree.

 

Leading MBA courses in India (the list below is in no particular order   each institute is reputed, and appeals to different student types)

Name of institute	Location	Website
Indian Institute of Management	Ahmedabad	www.iimahd.ernet.in
Indian Institute of Management	Bangalore	www.iimb.ernet.in
Indian Institute of Management	Kolkata	www.iimcal.ac.in
Indian Institute of Management	Kozhikode	www.iimk.ac.in
Indian Institute of Management	Indore	www.iimidr.ac.in
Indian Institute of Management	Lucknow	www.iiml.ac.in
Xavier Labour Research Institute (XLRI)	Jamshedpur	www.xlri.edu
Tata Institute of Social Sciences	Mumbai	www.tiss.edu
Indian School of Business	Hyderabad	www.isb.edu
Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University (FMS)	New Delhi	www.fms.edu
Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies	Mumbai	www.jbims.edu
Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies	Mumbai	www.nmims.edu
SP Jain Institute of Management & Research	Mumbai	www.spjimr.org
Institute of Management Technology	Ghaziabad (near Delhi)	www.imt.edu
TA Pai Management Institute	Manipal	www.tapmi.org
Management Development Institute	Gurgaon (near Delhi)	www.mdi.ac.in
Xavier Institute of Management	Bhubaneshwar	www.ximb.ac.in
International Management Institute	New Delhi	www.imi.edu
FORE School of Management	New Delhi	www.fsm.ac.in
Symbiosis Institute of Business Management	Pune	www.sibm.edu
Symbiosis Centre for Management and HRD	Pune	www.scmhrd.edu
Goa Institute of Management	Goa	www.gim.ac.in
Indian Institute of Forest Management	Bhopal	www.iifm.org
Indian Institute of Foreign Trade	New Delhi	www.iift.edu
Tata Institute of Social Sciences	Mumbai	www.tiss.edu
Institute of Rural Management	Anand (Gujarat)	www.irma.ac.in
Mudra Institute of Communications Ahmedabad	Ahmedabad	www.mica india.net
National Institute of Fashion Technology	New Delhi	www.niftindia.com
National Institute of Industrial Engineering	Mumbai	www.nitie.edu
Indian Institute of Technology   school of Management	Mumbai	www.iitb.ac.in/~som
Indian Institute of Technology department of Management Studies	New Delhi	www.iitdmba.org
Indian Institute of Technology   Vinod gupta school of Management	Kharagpur	www.som.iitkgp.ernet.in

 

Tips: Don’t go as per the rankings. Conduct your own survey of colleges before selecting one.

 

 

The Various admission Tests

 

The Written Test

• Each institute has a written admission test, either its own test (like XAT for XIMB, SNAP for Symbiosis, etc.) or part of a common test (like CAT conducted by the IIMs) used by several institutes
• These tests are typically 2 hour multiple choice tests.
• Currently, all tests are paper based (i.e., you answer on paper with a pencil) ; however there is a move towards computer based tests. XLRI experimented with a computer based test in 2002, but operational problems forced its cancellation.
• Each institute conducts its test once a year (for dates see Important Date)
• Test scores or marks are not revealed by any institute. Successful candidates are informed directly
• Most of these tests cover high school topics, and difficulty levels are not very high for a graduate (unlike graduate entrance exams like IIT JEE or Medical). However, skills like time management (answering maximum number of questions on the given time), error minimization (keeping number of wrong answers low, to avoid negative marking) and question selection (attempting questions in an order that suits your strengths) are critical in maximizing performance.

What the Written Tests cover

• Quantitative Ability (QA): A test of your mathematical skills   essentially high school mathematics. Topics covered include Number Systems, Profit & Loss, Percentages, Averages, Progression, Work, Speed, Geometry and Algebra.
• Data Interpretation (DI): A test of your ability to analyze and give specific information from Tables, Activity Charts, Case lets, Bar Charts, Pie Charts and Graphs. At times a variety of Analytical Reasoning questions also come under this section. These are both single puzzle type questions as well as case let data sets.
• Verbal Ability (VA): A test of your English usage    Grammar, Vocabulary and Verbal Reasoning.
• Reading Comprehension (RC): A test of your English reading comprehension skills. This section contains a few passages followed by questions that test your comprehension of the ideas contained in the passage as well as your reasoning skills.
• General Awareness/Business Awareness (GA/BA): A test of your awareness of current affairs and business events. This section appears in most admission tests, except CAT. The test has questions on political events, scientific developments, awards, economic indicators, brands, CEOs and books.
• Logical Reasoning (LR): A test of your analytical skills through Data Sufficiency exercises, puzzles and deductive reasoning. Data Sufficiency questions are based on basic mathematics.

Are these tests identical? Are there differences?
Well, there are lots of similarities and a lot of differences as well. For instance, CAT   the premier test, does not usually have the Business Awareness section, but time management is a crucial element here   as there are far more questions than can be possibly answered in the given time. The FMS test, on the other hand, has a Business Awareness section, the XLRI test has a higher difficulty level for math’s (including topics like set theory & probability), the MICA test includes an advertising aptitude test, and the TISS test contains an essay on a socially relevant topic. Some tests have negative marking, others don't! It can get quite exhausting, just keeping track!

How do you handle this maze? Simple! Enroll for one of our courses, and we'll show you the way. We train students for each of the tests, CAT or otherwise   come and join the Career Launcher fraternity, and get the unfair advantage they enjoy over other students. Read why enrolling for any of our courses makes more sense.

 

Tips: CAT, XAT, CET, MAT and SNAP are fair enough to attempt. There many other exams, which are not  

          mentioned in this article.

 

 

Important Dates

             

 

1. CAT – Conducted by IIM. Application is available from August. Application deadline Oct 2^nd week. Test date Nov 3^rd week. Interview month feb/mar.

                                Visit: www.iimahd.ernet.in

 

2. XAT   Conducted by XLRI. Application is available from September. Application deadline    Nov end. Test date Jan 1^st week. Interview month March.

                                 Visit: www.xlri.edu

 

3 CET  Conducted by DTE, Maharastra. Application is available from March. Application Deadline April. Test date May. Interview month June/July.

                                 Visit: www.dte.org.in

 

4. NMIMS – Conducted by NMIMS, Mumbai. Application is available from November. Application deadline Dec 2^nd week. Test date Feb 1^st week. Interview month April.

                                 Visit: www.nmims.edu

 

5. SNAP – Conducted by SIMB, Pune. Application is available from November. Application deadline Dec 3^rd week. Test date Jan 3^rd week. Interview month Feb.

                                 Visit: www.sibm.edu

 

6. IIFT   Conducted by IIFT, Delhi. Application is available from October. Application deadline Nov end. Test date Jan 3^rd week. Interview month March.

                                  Visit: www.iift.edu

 

 

The Post test Process

 

All the top institutes conduct a personality assessment of all candidates before final selection. Each institute selects a fixed number of students from the written test (the number of such students, and score cutoffs, vary for each institute, and are not made public). 

This personality assessment is normally a 2 stage process   the Group Discussion and the Personal Interview. Some institutes have additional testing (for example, FMS conducts an extempore speaking test).

Group Discussions

What's a GD ?
A "group discussion" is just that   a discussion by a group of people. Typically 8 15 students sit across a table and are asked to freely discuss a particular topic, while their discussion is observed by a panel of evaluators. The discussion topics could be on virtually anything of general interest   be it world politics, sport or business.

How are you evaluated?
Participants are evaluated on a variety of skills   teamwork, leadership, listening & articulation skills, to list a few. This is a rather subjective evaluation process, where as many as 15 participants are judged based on their performance in a 20 minute Group Discussion.

Typically, you are evaluated on

What you Say:
Your comprehension of the core idea, the quality of your arguments, your knowledge of the subject, your clarity of thought.

How you Say it:
Your teamwork, your persuasion skills, your body language, discussion etiquette

Types of GDs
Structured GDs:
The most common form of GD    a topic is provided, the time limit is set, broad rules are given, and participants are left alone to discuss it. No leader is appointed however, that is left to group dynamics.

Unstructured GD:
Here, no clear instructions are given. The participants are expected to decide the objectives of the discussion on their own. These can be particularly unsettling for many students, and it is good to go prepared for such a situation.
There is no surefire way of GD success   remember, it is a subjective elimination process. And a lot depends on the topic you get, the other people in your group, and of course, the perceptions of the evaluating team.

How on earth do you 'prepare' for a GD ?
Rather than leave it to chance. Read English newspaper daily and if possible a few books of your interest.

The Personal Interview
Nothing scares a student more than a personal interview with a senior panel of experts! For most graduates, this is the first serious selection interview they have faced. And the pressure that a 'bad' performance can make all your preparation go to waste is enough to make most people nervous.
Most institutes follow a similar format for the interview. A panel of 3 5 interviewers meets the student in a closed room. Normally these interviewers are from different disciplines, most are normally professors at the institute, and occasionally behavioral psychologists are involved to observe how you interact.
The interview itself is totally unstructured and depends entirely on the 'style' of the panel. After all, this is an elimination process, and they will compare your responses to those of other students they have interviewed.
Typical questions in an interview could be:
Why do you want to do an MBA ? Where do you see yourself 5 years from now? What is your favourite subject in graduation, and why? Why should we select you? What is special about you that qualifies you to be a good manager?
However, this can vary from institute to institute, from day to day, from panel to panel.

Tips: Read an English newspaper daily.

 

What’s next?

 

If you get through these processes, you are on a road to success.

 

Note: The above article is not inclusive. There can be various other exams and top rung B schools which may not be mentioned here. Please carry an intensive research before joining any College and for more Exams.

 

For any help in Bangalore for education, I can be reached at vikas.mohata@gmail.com or

Ph: 9886340728.