Importance of 10th, 12th & Graduation marks + Taking Gap for MBA Preparations (Part 2)

Ques - How important are my 10^th, 12^th & Graduation marks while getting selected in an MBA institute as well during placement process?

Ans -   Pretty important for both the cases specially if you are in GEM (General Engineering Male) category. For IIM’s if you are a GEM, a score of 98-99 percentile won’t guarantee a call from IIM A, B, C. Even during placements processes a lot of good companies filter candidates based on their 10^th,12^th, Gradation college’s Brand. A candidate with 90+ in 10^th,12^th plus NIT/IIIT tag gets calls from all the cream companies whereas a candidate with 70-80% in 10^th & 12^th with an average private engineering brand may find it difficult to get shortlist even from companies belonging to its core domain.

Why are past performances given so much weightage? Primary Reason is the lack of data about you to convince the concerned companies, Institutions that you have the best managerial talent in you which the 99% other candidates don’t have even though you have scored an average 70-80 % marks in your childhood . Consider a scenario where an IIM institution need to shortlist 100 GEM students out of say a pool of 1000-2000 GEM student all securing 98+ percentile, which criteria is the cheapest to filter out the students? That’s right – 10^th 12^th marks! Other methods which look beyond quantitative measures are too time taking and expensive for a country like India (especially for the initial rounds) same goes for companies who have very limited time to shortlist students.

 So, is this end of the road for an average student who worked so hard for his 98+ percentile? Off course not! You just need to be smarter and have some patience. There are a lot of good colleges who don’t put such criteria’s and are equally good For example, colleges like MDI Gurgaon, IIFT (It has a separate exam but I’m assuming a 98+ guy wont have much problem cracking this)  are very good colleges in the league of say IIM  Indore  OR say XLRI which is comparable to say IIM L, K also has very high weightage on XAT score for shortlisting. Now as far as companies are concerned, you just need to be smart once you get into the college. Even though you might find it difficult to get shortlisted for creamy layer companies, but you will get opportunities for other good companies which have equally good roles and packages even though they come in the end or during the middle of placement process.                           

Ques – I am working for a company XXX and earning XXX LPA, I have got a call from an institute whose average package is XXX LPA, but the total fees is XXX Lakhs. Should I join? or should I wait and prepare for IIM ABC next year?    

Ans – This really depends on where you want to be in the next 10-15 years and why do you want to do an MBA. Now when I ask people why they want to do an MBA? The general answer is they give is that package is higher, better career growth blah blah but the important question is what is your reason? and do you think with the current MBA college you will be able to fulfill that reason? The answer to this question is very complex and varies from person to person. hence what I will do is, mention few situations and try to explain what the best choice for that person in that circumstance based on my personal experience.

• A person who is in a manufacturing company from NIT earning 8-9 LPA and wants to do an MBA: Now the first question is do you like your current role? or would you like to work in the same domain even after MBA? If you want to change your domain then I will say go for MBA within 1st year of your job. College brand wont matter in such a case as even a non-IIM brand with an average real package of 12 LPA is a good option since you would be able to change your domain easily with less than 1 year of experience and NIT tag will help you in getting shortlisted for a lot of good non-manufacturing companies. As for the financial aspects of leaving a 8-9 LPA package for 12 LPA job + 20 Lakh loans, let me tell you servicing loan after MBA is very different from servicing loan after Engineering. While engineering jobs don’t have a lot of monetary bonuses, MBA job comes with a lot of incentives which increases exponentially as you progress in your career. On an average an MBA graduate finishes off his/her loans in maximum of 3-4 years even while leaving a luxurious life in those 3 years. Monthly package of 11-12 Lakhs gives a monthly salary of 85-86 K in hand with minimum monthly EMI of say 25-26K for 10 years for the full loan. Now that translates to 65K in hand for monthly spending. I agree that with a job in your hand you could have had 11-12 LPA without any loan but now you have changed your domain from say manufacturing to FMCG or Data scientist which is to your liking and with good planning you can clear your loan in 2-3 years and be in a much better situation after 5-6 years with better package as well as job satisfaction

• A person who has completed Btech from a private college could not get placements and cracked a tier-3 MBA college with 5-6 LPA package: Now it really depends on the person , you can be pretty confidant that next year you can crack a much better college and take a year drop to prepare next year or you are okay with starting out on a smaller package from an average MBA college and later improvise you skills to increase package by switching or promotion. It all depends on your comfort level and the ability to execute your plan. The key here is knowing your strengths and playing on your strengths to decide. It’s mostly “If you want to start out big because you know you can get good percentile” Vs “you can progress in your career very fast once you get a job and cracking a 95+ percentile is not your cup of tea”

Conclusion: Hence you see it all depends on the understanding of your strengths and weaknesses before making any judgement. I know a lot of people who are exceptional when it comes to competitive exams, they can crack any exam if they prepare well, for them taking a gap makes perfect sense. While at the same time there are people who struggle in these exams out of nervousness, being extremely weak in one section (Verbal/Numeric);  for them it doesn’t make much sense to wait for another year if they have a decent college in hand capable of providing them the placement package they you are looking for.