Way2Top

On Sunday, towards the end of Savita Mahajan’s Q&A Session, one good friend asked

“Ma’am, is the water from taps drinkable?”

Asst. Dean replies “Yes, absolutely. We have our own water purification and filtering plants. The water you get in the taps is equivalent to mineral water.”

The student replies “On all the taps?”..After a brief silence, there was such a huge laughter in the class including Asst. Dean. This is what I call timely humour

Well, I had the first glimpse of how an MBA class will be. Even though it’s just the pre-MBA course, the number of questions and kind of questions that students were asking is staggering. The facilitator did well to answer all those questions. Sometimes, the class was deviating. For example, the class was on Introductory Financial Accounting. So she mentioned about the roles of Auditors. Suddenly lot of questions were fired like “Who certifies Auditors?”, “Is the Auditor bound to the organization?”, “Should all companies in India need to audit their financial statements?” etc., The role of Auditors and process of Auditing is a big chapter in itself, so the facilitator stopped the flowing questions and brought back the focus on Financial Accounting.

I didn’t ask any question. Am observing the kind of questions the students are asking. Looks like, I should not worry about the quality of my question and the relevance of the question. I will just try to shoot whatever question comes to my mind today.

We had our first of the “Introductions” from ISB on Sunday. Savita Mahajan gave a brief introduction about Pre-terms and finally answered all questions posed by students. The questions were mainly focussed on placements, food and infrastructure.

So far 373 students have paid the 1-lakh deposit and enrolled into the course. That’s 53 more than the announced intake! According to the asst. dean, only 90% of the admitted students join the class finally. So the class strength is expected to be around 330+.

The whole batch is divided into 4 sections with 90 students in each section. That’s a big figure for a class size. Class participation is going to be a challenge now!

The Study group list is also been provided. My group has 3 from chennai. Since we had frequent meetings before joining ISB, I know these two guys well. I am wondering on what basis the study group allocation was done. After seeing the composition of other study groups, my case seems to be an exception. I am yet to meet the other 3 guys. It seems 4 out of the 6 in our group are from IT background! My apartment mate’s study groups also has the same ratio..Extrapolating, I guess 65%-70% of this year’s batch are from IT. But I need to wait before knowing the official figure.

Many of the students have left hopes of remembering the names and faces of other fellow admits. The number is overwhelming…I guess the study groups will be a good starting point, and then sections and then like minded people..It will take time before really knowing each other.

Yesterday, the first ISB pool dunking happened! A girl from Goa.

The class schedule for Term1 was published today. I have the classes from 8:30-13:00. So need to get up early! Section C and D have classes from 14:30-19:00. This will change every alternate terms..

I have my first lecture experience tomorrow in the form of Pre-term in Accounting.

Blogging from ISB, from my room. A wonderful feeling that cannot be described through words Am officially part of ISB now!!!

Reached ISB on 15th of April noon. The Air-deccan travel was quite smooth. It was a no-frills aircraft, so no complaints on facilities. I had to pay for excess baggage of around 17 kgs. The flight reached Hyderabad on schedule. The weather in Hyderabad is pretty dry and hot. In chennai it sweats a lot but you don’t find the heat. Here, I could feel as if I am in furnace.

The ISB-meet-and-greet service arranged a cab for us in discount (Normal rate is 350.00, for ISB students 270.00). After 35 minutes travel by car, I reached ISB. At security, the guards told my allotted student village and room number. My accommodation is SV2 - I12. After reaching the student village, there were bearers who assisted me in carrying the luggage to my room. Unpacked my bags and went to have my lunch. The lunch was quite good. (4-star level).

The interaction with fellow admits started from cafetaria. Different profiles, different faces, different behaviours. Interesting. Very tough to remember the names and faces. So far I have said “hi” to 130+ guys. I remember only 50-60 names now. I met some fellow bloggers. Sandeep Jha and Thought Leader. They were very different from my imagination. It was good to meet them in person. I like both of them. Hoping to see more familiar names from yahoo groups.

The whole campus is quite beautiful, just as I imagined (from photos). BEAUTIFUL, BEAUTIFUL, BEAUTIFUL…

I completed my registration on 16th. Everything was organized very professionally. The whole registration process took around 1 hour. They gave us pre-term materials, pre-term and orientation schedule, a short-kurti with ISB logo, telephone access code, student ID card etc., The laptop configuration took nearly one day. I received it only today morning, So I couldn’t blog yesterday.

I also opened an ICICI bank account. They opened the account in 5 minutes and gave me the debit card, cheque books and other details too. Cool!

Received the ISB Planner today. It’s a calendar with space for marking appointments and
events.

Today, there is a introductory speech by Savita Mahajan, Assistant Dean.

The pre-term classes starts Monday…

My brother had his operation day before yesterday. The doctors have fixed the bones using screws. He was crying involuntarily due to the heavy pain after the operation. He has been advised to rest for 3 weeks. Today he is doing fine. A relief for me.

I will get my Digital Camera in a week’s time. Once I get it, I will take some pictures and upload it.

Today morning we received a phone call from my brother who is staying in a rented house in other end of chennai. He had badly twisted his shoulder and couldn’t move an inch and was suffering from extreme pain. He had his shoulder dislocated many times in the past and he will relocate it himself bearing the extreme pain. Inspite of my repeated warnings and forcings, he didn’t come to doctor.

The shoulder dislocation that happened today was much worse and he was crying on the phone at 3 a.m. in the morning. Immediately we hired a car and went to his place and admitted him the hospital. His friends helped in carrying him to the hospital. He was crying due to the excruciating pain. While travelling in the car, a sudden jerk put his shoulders back in position. We anyhow admitted him to the hospital and the doctor suggested an immediate surgery to strengthen his shoulder and fix the relocation problem. He will have his surgery tomorrow.

My parents were pretty upset. Thing is my brother has suffered heavily in his life, especially the last 7 years. One can’t imagine the hell he went through..I am happy about the way he has recovered and fighting the odds in his life..And once-in-a-while he will face these sort of problems..Hope this surgery is the last of his struggles..

I had to come back from the hospital as I haven’t started an inch of packing. I almost completed the packing just now. Tomorrow morning I will make a visit to the hospital and then head towards the airport.

Mood is pretty sober and not an ideal way to start ISB .. All the enthu I had the day-before is absent today.

A fellow ISBian has started a photo-blog. He will upload pictures of ISB, seen through his eyes, in a regular basis. An effort different from other regular and conventional ISB bloggers. Good luck to you ISBinPic (Hope you disclose your identity to me when we meet in ISB!)

http://isbinpics.blogspot.com

Just noticed that Gmail has offered 2 GB of storage space to many users. Interesting thing is the storage limit is increasing like a super-fast ticker in the login-page of Gmail. It’s like interest accumulating on a Fixed deposit. Cool! I have 2087 MB of storage space…I guess I will never have to worry about storage space

The ISB official placement reports are out. The placements this year has been phenomenal. But still the placement reports are not that detailed as I expected. Hoping to get a more detailed statistics once I join ISB.

Some links on Placement reports on ISB’05:

“ISB graduate bags Rs 80-lakh job!”
“Global biggies knock at ISB doors”
ISB’s official report

Fact sheet: ISB placements 2005

Salary

Record international salary : $181,000 (Rs 80 lakh)
Average international salary : $100,000 (Rs 44 lakh)
Highest Indian salary : Rs 20,00,000
Average Indian salary : Rs 10,01,539

Placement statistics for Women

Total number of women : 48
Total number of offers : 63
International offers : 4
Highest salary for a woman student : Rs 20,00,000
Average salary for a woman student : Rs 9,20,000

Percentage up in salary over 2004

International : 19%
Indian : 11%
Offers

Total number of offers : 344
Number of Lateral offers : 333
Number of International offers : 31

Placements summary

Total no. of firm that participated in the placement process : 149
Total no. of students who participated in the placement process : 251 out of 273

Leadership Positions in companies

COO
Director - Operations
International GM
Division Head
Associate
Senior Associate Consultant

Days are moving in fast pace. Even though I am not doing many things, I am finding myself busy.

I co-ordinated an ISB students meet last Saturday. Around 20 people turned up, including recently graudated ISB students. It was a relatively sobre meeting. Interactions were mainly one-to-one. Prithvi was pretty active asking many questions. Since I have been asking doubts and discussing things since January 15, I didn’t had many questions left. Still, it was interesting to hear some gyaan from previous batch. Talks centered around life in ISB, Placements, study groups and other mundane things.

I saw Raja Banerjee for the first time personally. He is pretty silent and cool guy. He looked younger than he appears in the photos.

My contact lens have arrived and I am finding it tough to use it in a regular basis. My eyes ache after long usage. So, I guess I would have to use spectacles and contact in alternate basis.

I will start packing things tomorrow. Looks like I will exceed the weight limits of Air Deccan by miles. A consolation news is that extra cost per kg is just Rs. 20. So, I can carry extra 15 kgs by paying Rs. 300/=.

My DD for the first-installement has arrived. The moments when I ordered my DD was pretty intensive. I have never taken a DD for a sum of Rs. 6,55,000/= in my life. Almost everything is set for ISB ride…

Got this link from Ashish Blog. Based on my answers, the site says that I am a Life blogger..Very true…

You Are a Life Blogger!

Your blog is the story of your life - a living diary. If it happens, you blog it. And make it as entertaining as possible.

Purchased a Blazer yesterday. It’s a two-button, royal blue blazer from Raymonds priced at Rs. 3,100 (after 25% discount). I will be using it only on a very few occasions. I need to buy a white and cream formal shirts to match the blazer.

Color of blazer.

Also bought couple of books. Snapshots from Hell & 10-day MBA. I have started reading Snapshots from Hell and I can perfectly relate to what the author is describing. Very interesting…

Yesterday I was chatting with one fellow ISBian. The talk centered around the learning in the upcoming one-year. How can anyone learn the subjects in 5 week period? (6th week is exam). And the number of subjects will be 5. The learning will be pretty shallow. Now, I am feeling more greedy and want more time to learn the subjects… But, that’s the whole point of one-year MBA..to save time. The whole talk started when I mentioned about the detailed syllabus provided in IGNOU distance MBA. There are 100’s of pages for each subject. It’s going to be a monumental challenge to cover so many concepts in such a short frame of time.. By the end of core-term, I think I would have mastered the art of absorbing the concepts in limited time..

I remember a current student’s view on this. He mentioned that the one-year MBA gives us exposure to all subjects and concepts. We should build and expertise on the items that we are interested in later…

10 days to ISB venture..