This is the question which may have very well costed me a seat at IIMB. This is the question which most of the people preparing for their B school interviews/admission essays dread answering. This is the question which maybe the most clichéd question in any interview. This is the question which all aspirants prepare the best yet this is the question which nobody can answer perfectly.
I may have gotten an admission to one of the IIMs, I may have worked for 2 years but I am still not very sure about the answer to this question. What I dread is that even after doing an MBA I might not be able to answer this question. And this fear is amplified after I read the book “Snapshots from hell, The making of an MBA”. The book is about the first year at Stanford Business School, a school among the top 3 business schools worldwide. The book is about the struggle to cope up with the academic rigor, to get used to the cut-throat competition, to worry of not getting a job and more importantly the struggle to survive. And finally it also tries to answer the question and it would be a lie if I say that I don’t agree with it. We will come to the answer later. First of all lets see what an MBA is and what an MBA actually is.
So what does an MBA from XYZ school provide the graduates with? Is an MBA more of a fancy degree than some real stuff? Is the school matters more than the education itself? Will the graduates end up being at the same position 5 years down the line had they played Golf and boozed instead of learning how to run a company at the school? Will it be fair to say that all a business school does is put a higher price tag on its graduates? The answer to all these questions is YES and NO. What I feel is that an MBA is both. It makes you sellable, it creates demand for you but that demand is also right. An MBA student learns 100s of different things during the course of 2 years. He is among the crème-de-la-crème when he enters a prestigious business school. He is already one of the better brains around, so he deserves all that he gets after his graduation, every penny of it. But it is also true that an MBA is a bit overrated. It’s the experience and sweating out in the corporate battlefield which ultimately separates chaff from the wheat. Its just that the odds of an MBA being the grain are higher than being the chaff.
Coming back to the question, Why MBA. I still don’t have an answer but I would like to quote from the book itself. It diversifies the outlook of an individual, forces people to learn about everything ranging from IT to OB to marketing, gives people poise and self-confidence, and more than everything gives the power of networking. The contacts made during the two years last lifelong and reap rewards continuously. A business school gives an opportunity to mingle with bright, business minded classmates and to give serious thoughts to all kinds of business careers. A business school doesn’t take anyone to paradise; in fact it teaches that there isn’t a paradise.
So now, is a business school worth the effort and the investment? I have already taken a decision and till now not repenting it. So, decide for yourself…
