Students’ Speak: Fine-tune your strategies and go for it again

By: Abhishek Desai

At the start of the exam preparations, a sincere MBA aspirant always desires to get admission into a college of his choice, whether it is an IIM or a non-IIM. He puts in the required time, money, and efforts to ensure that the desired college is within his reach.

However, unfortunately, sometimes the result of an exam doesn’t turn out as per the expectations, and an aspirant isn’t able to meet the necessary cutoff(s) of his desired college.

When a student faces some challenges on not get a college of his choice then he is looked down upon by his family members and friends. This leads to a student compromising on his career by taking admission in a college he never would have wanted to go. This is done just to ensure the time taken for exam preparation doesn’t go waste. As a result, later on, he is unable to get good learning and job opportunities after taking admission in a low-ranked college.

To overcome this major challenge, I would strongly advise students not to take admission into an average or below-average college in the first place and, thereby, save themselves wasting both precious times (two years), and the hard-earned money. They should rather appear for the MBA entrance exams once again with a better and more effective preparation method. Having said that, to study those concepts and formulas all over again is easier said than done. However, if a student really wishes to get a good college, he has no other option but to put in those efforts again. But it must be noted that preparing once again won’t take a lot of time since the study part has been done by you already. Just that the revision and exam-taking strategies would need some fine-tuning which can also be done with ease if one is determined enough to do so.

Students can read many inspiring incidents of aspirants reappearing for the MBA entrance exams and passing with flying colours. Students can take note of such examples and relate their stories with themselves. Again, there is no guarantee that studying once again for the exams will surely get you admission into the choice of your college. But the efforts taken to do so will definitely be much better than studying in a not-so-good college and then later on seeing your peers and friends grabbing much better job opportunities. The higher the risk taken, the higher the rewards gained.

Another food for thought could be to explore other avenues for career growth such as preparing for the bank exams, civil service, foreign education, etc if one isn’t hell-bent to just pursue an MBA from India.

About the Author:

Abhishek Desai is currently pursuing Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) in e-Business from Welingkar Institute of Management. He has done his Summer Internship in the field of Market Research with 'TimesofMoney'. He's also served as 'Secretary of the Green Committee' at Welingkar.