Push and pull of the MBA bull run

It is about the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Wharton offers the best undergraduate business program in the United States, considered equivalent to an MBA.

Founded in 1881, Wharton has pioneered innovative business curricula and launched the business careers of thousands of Wall Street and Fortune 500 tycoons.

The School takes 500 of the world’s brightest students willing to stake a whopping $120,000 investment in their education for the next four years. We are taken through the ivied walls of Wharton into the maelstrom of the Class of 2004 recruiting season as experienced by the hearts and minds of seven seniors coming from multiple backgrounds.

It is a gripping account of their story, their aspirations, the challenges they encounter, their capacity to cope with unexpected obstacles and its collective result.

They include Jon Gantman, a ‘legacy’ student whose parents studied at Penn. About ten percent of every Penn class is usually reserved for ‘legacy’ students, Shimika Wilder, an athletic African American, who was brought up in Maryland comes next, Shreevar Kheruka, brought up in Mumbai, and Anthony Sandrik, (originally from Lebanon), brought up in Manhattan, who wanted to ‘pursue a life where borderlines rarely exist.’

Finally, Grace Yoon from Los Angeles, who soon learnt the perils of “out of the box” thinking and the nitty-gritty of interviewing.

In contrast, Regi Vengalil, is a first generation Indian American, who wanted to become the ‘master of the universe’, a common MBA dream! And Jessica Kennedy from Austin, Texas, who was born with both drive and discipline.

Wharton is a four-year marathon. It culminates in a final sprint that takes the form of a ten-week recruitment period that turns out to be more demanding than anything these tender youth have ever experienced in their lives. They work against the odds, doing with very little sleep, working long exhausting hours and yet they manage to keep their wits about them!

Burnout!

If they make it, the opportunity that awaits them lies in joining the ranks of the global financial and corporate elite! The allure of the dream is as heady as it is seductive. It means power, wealth, fame, recognition and a chance to shape history. It is an irony that stiff competition for high pay packets usually results in the recipients burning themselves out in the first five years!

This is a challenging area of research and worthy of serious attention.

Do these young graduates eventually shape up? Was it worth the effort, money, energy, time, lack of sleep and coping with the competition?

“Having met many of Wharton’s future business leaders of America”, writes the author, “I can say that Wall Street in the twenty-first century is in good hands.”

This is too pat, too neat and a little hard to digest! There will be many who will disagree at the record of corporate America.

I was strongly reminded of Swami Yogananda Paramahamsa: “Happiness does not consist in getting what you want when you want it! It consists in getting what you need when you need it!” Yet, there is no gainsaying that the book invites public discussion on how contemporary global values shape our youth in defining not only their own aspirations, but also equally, the ambitions of their respective nations in a deeply divided world.

Book Review: How to make it to the best B-school

Mohit Kumar Jain and M. Harindran, both IITians, have written Break the MBA Admissions Barrier, to help make it to `the world's best business schools'. The book, from Pearson Education (www.pearsoned.co.in), begins with the question `why MBA'.

Reasons are many, such as career change, better pay, preparation for own business, credibility, and so on. "Consider a top MBA programme to be a boot camp," instruct the authors. "It will keep you on your toes... You will be forced to participate in discussions and be prepared for the occasional embarrassment. You will need to learn and appreciate the importance of interpersonal skills and dynamics through study groups where you would collaborate with people from all over the world."

The book has inputs on `choosing the school', `managing the timelines', `money matters', and `visas'. Mohit and Hari lay down `the 10 commandments of a B-school application'. Such as: `develop substance', by picking from incidents that demonstrate your leadership potential; and `build on your strengths and address your weaknesses'.

The authors advise: "Well-written essays can tilt the balance in your favour despite a low GMAT score, GPA or a career that has involved many switches." Remember, that to make an impact on the admissions committee, essays need to be humane and realistic too. "Qualities like creativity, maturity, and leadership can be brought out in the essays in your own language."

Good counsel.

US wants to replicate India's tech education success

The India-US education scenario is full of puzzles. Vastly larger number of Indians go to the US for higher studies than do Americans. On the other hand, US firms are recruiting Indian technical graduates in thousands, impressed by their quality.

“With a high quality of education and strong focus on Mathematics and Science, India is churning out large number of highly skilled people,” observes US secretary of education Margaret Spellings.

But despite the availability of such quality education the number of Indian students pursuing studies in various universities and institutions in the US is much higher than that of the US students studying in India.

Sources say that over 70,000 Indian students are undergoing higher studies in the US, which is the highest anywhere in the world. In contrast, there are just 780 US students presently undergoing studies in some Indian universities, mainly in IT, agricultural sciences and working with high schools to understand the pattern of higher secondary education in India.

Senator Michael B Enzi feels that “although more American students can come here, getting into universities here requires going through a very competitive process.” Although the same competitive process was there in the US, “but we obviously have much excess intake capacity in our colleges and universities.”

He, however, said that in the US interest to ensure that the students from other countries, who are getting educated in the US, should stay and work in the country. “We want their innovation skills and talents to be utilised in our country.”

Both Spellings and Enzi, who were the part of a delegation comprising some leading US Senators that visited Bangalore recently told Business Standard that the way India was churning out over 200,000 engineering graduates every year, while at the same time maintaining quality, really baffled them.

“Education of course is a shared value between the two countries and as the secretary of education, I am also anxious to know how you develop human capital and such a vast talent pool,” Spellings said. This was evident from the fact that so many American industries and companies were coming here to grow and expand, she added.

Underscoring the strong emphasis on Mathematics and Science in the Indian education system that produces large numbers of highly skilled people, the US education secretary said, “we need to incorporate this in our country”. This is one of the reasons why the US president has called for an ‘American competitiveness initiative’, which focussed on secondary education and Mathmatics and Science.

She said in the changing scenario, more and more US students are interested to learn in India, particularly in the IT and systems management field.

“At Infosys, they were telling us there were 300 permanent employees who will come here for six months to two years from the US and then go back. These are growing programmes and will grow over time,” she pointed out.

“There are already some instances when both Indian and US students are part of joint online degree programmes with partnership between the institutions here and in US.” This is happening as the barriers, whether bureaucratic or geographic, are breaking down, she added.

Hyderabad B-school beats IIM

While IIM alumni are talking in lakhs, students of a five-year-old B-school in Hyderabad are getting ready to count crores.

A graduate of the Indian School of Business has got a never-before offer of $233,800 (Rs 1.04 crore) a year.

While ISB dean M Rammohan Rao was cagey about announcing the student's name or the organisation that made the offer — "it is infringement on privacy," he said — he let on that three others had got Rs 1 crore-plus offers.

Thankfully, there is gender parity in the overload of greenbacks, with two of the four who got over Rs 1 crore being women.

The Class of 2006 is one happy batch. The highest domestic salary was Rs 30.33 lakh and the average an Indian company offered was Rs 11.77 lakh, an increase of 18 per cent over last year. The average in ternational offer saw a jump of 21 per cent over 2005.

There are more companies queuing up on the Hyderabad campus. This year, 142 companies came hunting for whiz kids. US-based realty firm Tishman Speyer made its first foray into India by parking at ISB.

It is not just the money, say students, some of whom chose Indian companies over pay cheques in dollars. "I was offered a very interesting job by a US-based tech company but I wanted to be closer home," says Yashraj Erande.

"So I took a job offer which would help me work in India's business environment."

In a new drift, several ISB students opted for jobs with various media companies, including RPG Saregama.

Kartik Ramakrishnan always wanted to be a consultant and he got the offer he wanted. Then came another offer — to set up an FM radio station. And he opted for this new challenge.