There is no disputing the fact that online MBA forums have captured the attention of numerous MBA aspirants across India. Although it has left the competition far behind, there are a couple of aspects of these websites that can prove to be the undoing of young MBA hopefuls.
Let's look at what an average impressionable youth of our education-centric society goes through once he decides to pursue an MBA. With stars in his eyes and precious little else to talk about, he decides to take the plunge and enrolls for CAT classes. For the uninitiated, CAT is like the altar at which many dreams are sacrificed in pursuit of an unattainable glory.
A bunch of like-minded peers advise him to log on to one of these numerous portals. And, voila! A whole new world opens for him and suddenly, he is in the midst of greatness. A world where a sentence is incomplete without the usage of IIM, ISB, CAT, Percentile, et al. The sheer numbers of people logging on to the MBA sites are so daunting that it's difficult not to get influenced by their opinions. The forums are so exhaustive with advice and two-bit opinions that they can be renamed to "A Dummy's Guide on How to Live up To Your Peers' and Parents' Expectations". The obvious problem that I perceive is that the site content, especially forums, places much more pressure on the students because there's no worse feeling than seeing your contemporaries etching out a better future (read: calls from the top B-schools) for them.
We can lie till the cows come home that others' success doesn't bother us, but can we really lie to ourselves? Does it really do anyone any good to read success stories about other people, to read about their CAT exploits day in and day out? The forums portray a picture quite contrary from the actual scenario-that it's bloody tough, near impossible to get a foothold into the premier B-schools of the country. And that you may have to settle for a lower-rung college, whose name has never cropped up in all those postings on the forums.
I find it quite a sad state of affairs when a query regarding CAT coaching at Mysore goes unanswered for weeks, but an IIM-related discussion starts recording enough traffic to crash the server. My grouse with MBA sites is that they don’t counsel that being second-best is acceptable sometimes. There's a world beyond the hallowed hallways of XLRI, FMS, IIM and although it isn't decked with holly, it's a road that you CAN tread upon fearlessly. I think the first step towards gaining admission into an IIM is to face the fact that 99 times out of 100; you will not get that call. Then you shall experience the five stages of grief: Denial (that statistic is for the below-average students), Anger (why can't the government open more IIMs), Bargaining (fine, IIM-K is as good as IIM-A), Depression (suicide doesn't seem so bad anymore, eh?) and finally, Acceptance (life is a bitch, yet it goes on).
And that's when the real fun begins. Chasing that elusive 1 time out of 100 times, and when you're ready to embark on the journey of a lifetime, your friendly neighborhood MBA site is just a click away.
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