Dear IIMs,
It’s a sincere appeal from me with a very little expectation
that it would be ever read or taken seriously by any concerned authority. I
don’t know whether I should call it an appeal, a request, a frustrated letter
or something else but I want to express myself so that I won’t have the regret
that I also remained silent against a system that was intended to serve me.
Every young Indian has, at some part of his life, lived the
big IIM dream, no matter even for a miniature amount of time. Some continued
with this dream for a long time, and for some chasing this dream became their
life. The comfortable life afterwards, the fat pay packages, the great alumni,
the huge infrastructure, secure future; life becomes a paradise once you
achieve the big IIM brand.
People who failed to get into a good graduate college see
this as an opportunity to wash their previous sins, rectify their old mistakes
and to achieve what they thing they truly deserve. Many are willing to work
hard to the edge of their potential and even beyond that. Many are willing to
sacrifice all the comfort, fun and luxuries of their life for a while just for
focusing on their CAT preparation. But the inner fire, the internal source of
motivation that ignites one’s spirit and keep on pushing students to work hard
fades soon when they realize that this time hard work is not the sole factor.
Many who start their preparation with great enthusiasm,
quits in midway, when they realize that there are many factors that will
control their admission into a good B school and no matter how well they do in
CAT, there will always be some uncertainty. This is the time, when one realizes
the worth of board marks and even graduation marks.
Now how many of us really knew that we will try for CAT when
we were in 10th and 12th?? I don’t think there is much
and in fact if there were, who cares at that time. No one has even a faint idea
that board marks will be such a huge factor in deciding ones eligibility in an
IIM.
Now what I want to ask all the IIMs is how come board marks decides
one’s ability to be a good manager. What’s the relevance?? In 10th
class we have subject like Hindi, English, and Science; how come they are even
minutely related to one’s ability to be a good manager? Then comes the 12th
class, be it commerce or be it PCM, how are physics, chemistry related to ones
analytical or problem solving ability? I agree that board marks indeed define a
certain level of consistency and hard work but I find no sense in laying such a
huge stress on them and making them mandatory for admission criteria. They can
be given certain weightage but they can’t be a deciding factor.
There is no guarantee that those who secure 90+ in boards
are born genius, though, no doubt they are hard working but I guess top
institutes generally seek sheer genius in one and not the ability to work hard.
Also we can safely assume that those who secure less than 70 can be discarded
for admission just because they don’t satisfy these criteria. This is absurd,
one bad day or one bad week shouldn’t affect a person’s entire life.
Now we move to the most illogical part. 10th and
12th usually have a common system so we can give them some
weightage, but graduation marks. It’s like judging on an entire different dimension.
It’s like a competition in which there is no common quality or attribute. Every
university has different system of checking, teaching and evaluation and
graduation percentage may vary due to many stupid things.
One needs to secure at least around 80 for IIM A and around
85 for IIM S. Now 85 in graduation sounds like a joke to me, and in fact it is.
I heard that in some universities like Pune University the topper lands at
somewhat around 80, so no matter how hard you try you are already out of the
race for A and S, that’s height of being unfair.
Besides percentage in graduation varies according to the
practical and class work marks, for which, one is at pure mercy of teachers and
luck. No matter how talented or hard working one is, the major chunk of
practical marks is awarded on one’s ability of sycophancy. So unless IIMs think
a good manager most posses the quality of sycophancy I find no plausible reason
in giving graduation percentage such a strong preference.
What I find most senseless is IIM ahmedabad’s criteria of
providing points. The table is like ( a*b*c+d+e) where a stands for 10th
board marks, b stands for 12th , c stands for graduation, d stands
for masters degree and e stands for work experience. ‘d’ and ‘e’ hardly have
any effect on ones selection so let us focus on a, b and c. 60 and above gets 1
point, 70 and above gets 2 point and 80 and above gets 3 point. And for sure
shot call you have to secure at least 80+ in all a, b and c else you are
doomed. What I find hardly irrational is that one scoring 79.9 gets 2 point
while one scoring 80 gets 3. Isn’t this the height of nonsense? Why not give
one scoring 79 2.9 points so the system will judge every student fairly. I
don’t know why they created such a system where a student’s admission is based
on luck than brilliance.
Then other IIMs also joined this non sense, some of the IIMs
like Indore completely nullify CAT score in their criteria. So no matter you
get 100 percentile, you won’t get a call from IIM Indore if you have sinned in
past. Then what’s the sense of taking a different exam?? Making students study
vigorously for 3 years and then give them no credit of scoring very high? I
don’t know, maybe I am not smart enough to find the reason behind all of this. But
how come a person scoring 97 in CAT better than a person scoring 100 just
because he got 85+ in boards and the other one got 80+?? Guess our country
wants to give a message of preferring mugging our talent.
What I don’t understand is that are IIMs only for formality?
To intake certain amount of students having well past records and getting them
placed? What about nation building, what about developing future leaders, what
about making India a leader in global economy? Why not give a fair chance to
all possible leaders and managers by setting fair and plausible criteria where
everyone can participate equally in the competition of best B schools in the
country. Because of these stupid, senseless and irrational criteria a majority
of sheer talent derails soon from IIM pursuit. Some switches to GRE, some other
manages to satisfy them by college placements, some other remains happy in the
technical line or whatever their graduation field was. So at the end of the
day, it’s our country that is losing pure talent which may change the future
for good.
Those who deserves to be in good colleges are wasting their
talent and time elsewhere and the crowd which enters IIM, no doubt talented,
represents only similar perspective and thought processes. The consistent ones
they are and as such bring no creativity to class which could have been brought
by the one wasting their time elsewhere. The whole country opposed when board
marks were involved in admissions to IITs, even the present pattern is
criticized a lot. So why IIM continues with the same pattern I don’t
understand. I hope they will change this pattern soon, and give chances to the
people with best potential to be upcoming leaders or else we would soon be
trapped in a vicious circle of coaching, mugging and parental pressure on
children, end result of which will be nothing more than slowing down of our
growth and unbalance in our entire education and professional structure.
