First Impressions ...

Landed in Dubai on a hot summer day in the afternoon … right from the airport itself got accustomed to seeing things on a bigger or rather grander scale(compared to things back in India). We watched in awe as we moved across the huge airport . The moment we stepped out from airport and boarded the SPJCM pick up bus to hostel , we wherever we looked around the city it was just tall buildings n taller buildings emerging out of never ending miles of desert sand and amazing roads n flyovers full of dream cars zooming past us , the ‘wow’ factor continued. The city had set ‘lofty’ standards in our minds and upon arrival in the hostel was pleasantly surprised to see the lofty standards being maintained in the hostel too . The hostel is an entire apartment complex in International city on the outskirts of Dubai, it is just 20 min from college by Bus (arranged by college). We were all shown to our pre-allocated service apartments , which were much beyond what we had expected ! reminded me of the training days at a heaven called Mysore Infosys campus …

The college arranges transport from hostel to college in mornings and the buses leave on the dot , hence its quite a challenge for all of us to get ready in time to catch the bus …

The college is located in a place called academic city , which has lots of educational institutions in the middle of desert ! like most of the places in Dubai this place is also coming up fast and with huge sums of money being pumped in to develop world class infrastructure and things do happen here and happen fast . Its hard to imagine that the whole place was just a stretch of desert 3 yrs back !

All buildings are identical and after a long travel along numerous winding roads we finally reach the college building and after seeing the entire place and hostel , I was kind of thinking that the everything being excellent would be hard. So I thought initially that the college could be a letdown because we already had set very standards based on what we saw so far; I couldn’t be more mistaken … the first few hours itself changed whatever doubts I had about the place. The facilities , the kind of people , the classroom with beautiful amphitheatre like seating arrangement , with video recording of each lecture and the entire atmosphere convinced and reassured me that I had got a very good deal. We had a few ice breaker sessions for us to know each other (given that we were a batch of 150) better . then all the intricacies of the course was explained and we had a guest who was a VP in a reputed UAE based company telling us about life and business climate in middle east in general and Dubai in particular. We also had a couple of visits or rather sightseeing kinda tours arranged by college authorities to give us a feel of the city , mainly to get us adjusted to and feel the ‘global factor’, one of the main reasons for pursuing a MBA here in Dubai. The city visit was followed by a Dhow cruise followed by dinner on the dhow ( big boat) arranged by college as a welcome.

Having thus settled in at the ‘global’city of Dubai , we embarked on the business of learning or earning our stripes and the first week gave us enough indicator of what lies in store , people started adapting quickly to the frentic pace of life in a 1 yr course which almost covers most of the stuff taught in 2 yrs at SPJIMR. The excellent professors (mainly from SPJIMR along with a few resident faculty and guest lecturers from IIMs/XLRI) , the daily quizzes and assignments meant we had our hands full. Class full of people with work-ex ranging from 1-7 yrs of experience spread across all sectors meant rich and insightful classroom discussion/ interactions .In the first month itself we started getting an idea of business in UAE through a series of guest lecturers where people from various sectors in Dubai addressed us. Market research projects meant that all of us had to interact with businesses in Dubai and get to understand what it takes and how they do it ... mine was with a wonderful place called Wolfi's Bike shop .. we went there posing as customers and observed how they add value and how they do business in general ...

That’s just a month down … with 5 more months of learning to follow before heading off to Singapore…

Ps: i guess most of u mite hav already guessed from the wooden style tht this was written for college ! ;)

cat is out of the bag

Finally it is out ... those of us who had tried hard to bell it now know how or why we missed it ... Thanks again to RTI and efforts of ... , the 'process' of IIMB admissions are made public.

The disclosure was something which interested a lot of us who were part of the Cat brigade at sometime or other in our life , though it doesnt really matter now for most ...
Despite fact that the secrecy had lent some sort of aura to the whole process and even though it may not b same again , i think everyone wud defnitely prefer to know it ...

I was totally impressed with the kind of effort and dedication spent in refining and following up the admission process which is supposed to filter and get the best that there is ...


Having written the exam 4 times and having managed to walk across those gates only once for an interview , i know how tough it is ...


Lot of misnomers are cleared btw , about the percieved biases and patterns followed.

Also the odds seem to be stacked against ppl with not so good acads .. apparently CAT score is not the only factor as some coachin centers used to claim ...

Im not so good at summing up whats written in those 5 pages ...

so check this wonderful post by Rashmi which explains what this is all about ...