Backtrack to MBA entrance days...

Since there's nothing interesting happening in my life these days (at least nothing that I would want to bore my blog readers with), I decided to take a walk down the memory lane and share my journey through the tumultuous days of MBA entrance examinations which culminated in the very delightful SPJIMR, Mumbai admission.

2006 November - It was my second attempt at MBA entrances. My first attempt in 2005 (while I was in my final year of engineering) didn't go too well (percentiles remain undisclosed!). The second attempt was placed right in the middle of my job tenure at Oracle, Bangalore. Thankfully for me, the work-life balance that so many corporates CLAIM, was a reality at Oracle. I had sufficient amount of time on my hands to prepare for the entrance exams. But as luck would have it - I made the most unproductive use of that time that was possible. The few Sunday Mock CATs which I attended (purely out of the guilt feeling of paying 5K odd bucks to Career Launcher and not attending a lot of the mocks) were the saving grace.

The exams happened - some good, some bad, some ugly and some not worth qualifying with any adjective invented yet by mankind! For the sake of maintaining my reputation amongst those who know me, I shall restrict to discussing the "good" ones here. XAT was one of the good ones which ultimately fetched me an SPJIMR call.

Didn't come as a MAJOR surprise because I had the call in 2005 also with a lesser score in CAT. But nevertheless - it was wonderful to see my name on the website after hours of refreshing www.spjimr.org and www.pagalguy.com

Then came the most difficult part - "converting" the call (for the non-MBA aspirants : It means securing a final seat in the institute after clearing several rounds of interviews!). And while the logical mind would start expecting a whole lot of things here about how I went about preparing day and night for the interviews and stuck to that call for my dear life, I prefer to spring a few surprises :D

I only remember glancing at the newspapers every now and then and following some news channels once I was back from office (the news channels would still not receive higher preference than my favorite prime time channels - MTV, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel and HBO). Of course, the experience of attending an SPJIMR interview last year had me well prepared for what was coming my way :)

The fist round of interview took place in Bangalore - "smooth" is how I would describe it. No high points and no low points. Came to know the results a few days later when I was sitting in my office refreshing the website :P - I had cleared the first round. The second round held in Mumbai was also a breeze. The final results this time created a much bigger flutter than earlier - I was happy (and running right through my office corridors to call up home!), my manager at office wasn't too happy (I wasn't too happy about leaving Oracle either... one of the best places to work!) and mom and dad were obviously elated!

Amidst all this, I must mention that there was no bigger support than my friends and my brother who'd have to bear with my endless discussions about interviews, result dates, B-Schools etc. etc. etc. I virtually spoke the "MBA" language for those few months right through my coffee and lunch breaks at office (My good friends GA, BKD and PS will vouch for that!). If someone asks me today about why I converted my call this year and not last year - the answer would not be "good score", "work-ex" or "luck" - the answer is that it is these people who made all the difference :) So a BIG "thank you" to all of you.. And a specially BIG thank you to my special friend code-named "Sona Chhele" who was probably the saddest of the lot when I broke the news about leaving for Mumbai.

Till next time... Cheers !