ThinkISB

Disclaimer: I have not used this service nor am I sure about how it works. Also I do not work for them(make money from them) directly or indirectly.

An year a close friend of mine from ISB started this venture to help ISB aspirants with their application to the school. From my conversations with him and from my conversations with a few candidates who used the service I understand that the venture is pretty good and has helped a few candidates successfully get ISB admits. So if you are an ISB aspirant and are looking for some guidance you might want to checkout

www.thinkisb.com

Cheers,
--Badri--

Detailed GMail Error Message!!!

One of the best things that Google does when there is a GMail service outage is that it gives users detailed technical info about what is causing the problem.



cheers,
--Badri--

The true worth of an ISB MBA one year into the market

Wanted to commemorate the first anniversary of my passing out of ISB with a blog post titled "The true worth of an ISB MBA one year into the market" but my first principle of blogging (Do not blog unless you have something interesting to blog about) that I seldom adhere to kicked in and I missed the anniversary date of Apr 5th 2010. But now that the force of the principle has worn off and I am really sleepy I think I can drop my guards and start my ramblings so here we go ......

I have always thought that school is where you learn to assimilate a lot of data about various domains. Its just a test of you retention skills and of course your ability to reproduce what you learnt. But as you go higher somewhere around high school we start learning a little bit about applying what we learnt. In an undergraduate unfortunately at least where I went too you assimilate more data about another domain which you were previously unaware of, you can think of this as specializing too a little bit of applying what you learnt in school but with more focus on a particular domain. Yes there are practicals that test your application skills in UG but then they are more a test of pleasing the prof and reproducing what was taught by the prof who himself/herself knew very little about the subject, as it was taught to you.

Masters again is specialization , learn more about one domain and retain as much as possible , you also get to apply a bit from all that you have learnt before and a bit from what you are learning now but then no great shakes. Was ISB any different , I dont think so.

I dont blame the school for my being clueless, But the moment you figure out its only a test of retention and presenting whats retained in exams the brain just refuses to work harder than its required to (at least mine does) and you go through the curriculum taking the shortcuts without learning a thing. I experimented with the subjects I liked a lot and scored B grades in them. Soon I learnt that retain, render and appease prof in class to score A was the way to go, and it was easier and more rewarding(grade wise) to do than to try to apply what you are learning and score B. Its a one year course and irrespective of what they day grades do matter so to finish with the 3.5 on 4 that I did I had no choice but to sacrifice learning and resort to retaining.

But as soon I entered the job market I found my worst nightmares come true. Senior managers like one quality and just one quality more than all others in their subordinates - The ability to think of a good experiment to conduct, define the approach, conduct the experiment, analyze the results and make a pertinent conclusion. Why was that a nightmare two reasons i) It dint require me to be a MBA I could have that even when I was in UG ii) It was analysis and application and my 12+4+1 years of education laid more stress on retention.

I was going to write off my ISB as a sunk cost while all the case studies I did kicked in and started helping me. Even though the Class Participation, Study group and the short duration had taken their toll on my learning from the case studies, the case studies had taught me an important thing - how to analyze a problem in a structured way , how to look at a problem from different angles and how to test your conclusions. The time I spent with a study group consisting of people from different skill sets helped too, it taught me how to present my ideas in such a way that people would buy it. And finally being a graduate from the 12th best B-School in the World made me more confident about myself.

So am I saying ISB was totally worth it. Not really , if you can solve 100s of case studies by yourself, read a few management books or science books and learn how to analyze problems, find a group of friends to exchange and test your ideas with and find confidence within yourself I dont see why ISB is necessary.

Of course there is the case that you are being part of an institution that selects only an 'elite' few, the fact that you had good experience, acads and GMAT score to get an admit there and the fact that you worked you as$ off to succeed there, could send really good signals to an employer who might be considering hire you. But thats the bane of the market today, employers select for the fancy degree and not the underlying qualities because a good degree acts as a good filter, especially when talent is easy to find.

So to summarize was ISB worth it - yes it was it taught me skills that I would have never learnt by myself either due to laziness or lack of exposure,
Could it have been better - yes I felt there were more tests of retention than case studies and applications and the one year format made things harder to absorb, there was more adsorption than assimilation.

Would I recommend people do an MBA - not really if you can figure out how to analyze problems, break them into small easily conquerable pieces, work the internet to find solutions for these pieces, present your solutions and findings in an impressive way to others you are good as long as your employer realizes your worth. If thats not happening then you might need a MBA for signaling reasons. And if you need a MBA ISB rocks, even though the one year makes learning difficult I am convinced from my interactions with MBAs from other B-schools in India that one learns way more in ISB than in any other B-school in India (as long as you are looking for a general MBA, I dont know about specializations such as finance and marketing)

Cheers,
--Badri--

Time Magazine's quote on Sachin

"When Sachin Tendulkar travelled to Pakistan to face one of the finest bowling attacks ever assembled in cricket, Michael Schumacher was yet to race a F1 car, Lance Armstrong had never been to the Tour de France, Diego Maradona was still the captain of a world champion Argentina team, Pete Sampras had never won a Grand Slam. When Tendulkar embarked on a glorious career taming Imran and company, Roger Federer was a name unheard of; Lionel Messi was in his nappies, Usain Bolt was an unknown kid in the Jamaican backwaters. The Berlin Wall was still intact, USSR was one big, big country, Dr Manmohan Singh was yet to "open" the Nehruvian economy. It seems while Time was having his toll on every individual on the face of this planet, he excused one man. Time stands frozen in front of Sachin Tendulkar. We have had champions, we have had legends, but we have never had another Sachin Tendulkar and we never will."

Vinnathandi Varuvaya : One minute review

Good Music, Feel good light first half, extra boring extra long confused second half, great chemistry between Simbhu and Trisha, for some strange reasons Trisha looks good, Overall its an ok movie , but sitting through it can bore you to death.

P.S: Simbhu MUST stop trying to speak in English , watch the movie and you will know why

--Badri--

I am extremely ashamed that I am from TamilNadu

"Madras is the best city in the Universe" I used to say whenever people told me it was hot, there was acute water scarcity or that the autowalas were all crooks. I loved the city and was always proud to be from TamilNadu. In spite of the fact that I dont have words to describe it , TamilNadu is just different.

But today after watching this video

http://bit.ly/7W2hvL

Of an injured cop begging for help and being left unattended by "Ministers" of the state, I am convinced my state has gone to the dogs. Any "human" with some amount of "common sense" would have taken the cop to the nearest hospital in his/her car. The ministers could have also used their influence to arrange for immediate and proper care for the injured. But all they did was call for an ambulance 8 min after seeing the victim in pain and arrange for the victim to be carried to the hospital 20min after they reached the site. WORSE: they said thats the best they could do Fing Morons

"http://bit.ly/78HMXM"

The victiom was a cop, he was attacked by criminals, this man was working for the government, the public, trying to make our lives betters and Ministers whom we voted into power did NOTHING to save this man.

If these two morons are not punished for their FELONY , we can safely conclude that TamilNadu has gone to dogs and is one of the most inhospitable places in the universe.

--Badri--

Is this love ???

Disclaimer : Had these flow of thoughts lost night and they sounded good in my head, so wanted to write them down as a story, but as soon as I started writing down the story the thoughts got garbled and this emotional junk alone remained. Read at your own risk!!!

It was surely not love at first sight, I am pretty sure the first time we saw each other we instantly developed a deep hatred for each other. I loathed everything about her , the way she looked the way she treated people, everything.

But slowly things changed , I guess the more you interact with a person the more you start liking them. Its not a liking that comes because you find their traits good, in sync with your expectation but because you know them well enough to ADJUST. I guess thats the magic word, I learnt to ADJUST with her and our relationship improved.

The more time I spent with her, the more I learnt. Nah , she wasnt pedantic, I mean not always, but she had her own unique way of teaching me stuff and I loved it. I loved it cos I was learning and I loved it because I found her form of teaching absorbing.

A few years of association and then cupid's arrows struck. I dont know how it happened. Whenever someone inquired about our relationship I maintained that I just liked hanging out with her and it was nothing serious and I had no plans of settling down. But something changed , I dont know what, but I knew this, that the more time I spent with her the more I started falling for her.

There were others like her who were more beautiful, they even treated me better. They were nicer to me and let me go the way I wanted . She on the other hand used to tease me, irritate me a lot, confuse me, leave me stranded, in spite of all this I loved her. Perhaps I loved her because of all this, I dont know and I dont want to know, the fact is I was in love after a long long time and I was enjoying the feeling. But I was scared.

The previous time I was in love felt great too but sadly it dint last, we are still good friends and it sucks. So I was afraid this one would have an abrupt ending too and we will end up becoming "good friends". Also the last relationship I had ended around the same time I started telling everyone about it without asking her where she was in our relationship. So this time I was silent about my feelings. I dint want anything to disturb the peace I felt, I had only once been in a relationship and I knew fully well that being in love feels way better than being committed.So I wanted to let this feeling linger as long as it could.

Three years ran by and the feeling lingered, I never went past "I loved her" and she never said anything. Also all this while, I never tried to find out how she felt about me, but I presumed she liked me, she got more friendly, she cared more, she showed her frustration when I did things she dint like and I loved that I could frustrate her, her frustrations were beautiful too.

But this time, fate had different plans, even though I maintained silence we got separated, partly because I got attracted, to someone else I thought would be a better match and partly because it wasn't meant to be. Even though I tried to "move on" I rued everyday that I wasn't with her. Slowly the sorrow vanished and was replaced by a void that dint feel anything, dint know what the initial feelings were it just occupied a place in my heart and made me uncomfortable.

9 months after my separation fate arranged for a meeting between us, It was sudden and it was amazing. The moment my eyes saw her, I jumped in joy like a small kid who just received a fire truck(boy kid) as a gift, she just smiled , her most frequently used reaction and the one which I feared the most, for it hid lot more than it revealed. We spent 2 great days together and this time separating ways was easy or so I thought. So we said our good bye, we decided to remain friends and parted ways.

10 hrs after parting ways with her my heartaches, I cant stop thinking about her, I cant stop thinking how happy I felt in her presence, how at peace i was.....


--Badri--