Reality Of M B A Placements

What you see in newspapers - the crore-plus salaries - are not for PGP students, but for PGPX graduates. And they are the result of conversion from dollars to rupees, including several one-time bonuses and other inflationary tactics. Don't be misled. Be aware of what's happening; IIMA publishes its placement reports in a clear and lucid format on its website.

Why do I say all this?

Because as a PGP, I'm expected by several people to be swimming in banknotes the day I get a job - not happening. FFS, I took a loan of 2 million (nearly 30k USD) to pay for these two years. If anything, I'll be living on a tight budget while I pay back that money. The story is different for some performers at either end of the salary spectrum, but the picture in reality is quite different from what the dimwitted media shows you.

A little more about the work that goes into getting a job. (For the rest of this answer, when I say job, I mean summer internship; and placement refers to the placement for the same.)

You have to prepare a "master CV" - a repository of all your CV points, which typically runs from 5 to over 15 pages, depending on your educational background, work experience, extra-curriculars and so on. Based on this, you prepare up to seven one-page variants of a CV - the creatively named "one-pagers".

You spend a few weeks running around campus, getting these one-pagers reviewed by your seniors based on a hazy assumption that because they got into some top-notch I-bank or consult firm, they will be quite suited for the task. Never mind the fact that you probably have more work experience than them, or that your master CV itself is less than two pages long, with your one-pagers having less variation than cheap Chinese knockoffs - CV reviews!

Then come the mock GDs - moderated by seniors, again, with the hope that they know a thing or two about GDs that you don't. Fortunately, these are not mandatory;people only attend them because "everyone else is, and I have to practice participating in GDs" (I always had to resist the urge to laugh at that excuse. It's a discussion, all you have to do is speak!) I never attended a mock GD or interview, and I was none the worse off for it.