I started my MBA an year and a half ago when I was about 26 years old, with two years of work experience as a junior manager in the bank, and a Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration from Mount Carmel Institute of Management in India. Life looked beautiful and full of hopes. Then came the downturn with a big bang. And I saw everything I believed in fall around me, like a pack of cards. Strong or brittle, nothing could stand in the way of Hurricane Recession.
Here I am paying $783 per credit hour plus $400 every quarter on books and other reading material with the hope that one day I will be able to earn it all back. A risk I took based on my own set of assumptions. This called into question my understanding of getting higher education from a good business school like Santa Clara University. But then come to think of it what made me do my MBA?
Well that is a very long story which, I sure do not mind sharing. I was born in a family of five. My parents worked very hard like all middle class parents did. But the difference was that my father did a lot for others which left us the family with nothing much. From a very young age we were shunned by our rich cousins and mocked as losers. At that point in time I used to cry but now as an adult I am glad they made fun of my condition. It motivated me to achieve something in life.
I fought my parents and did the unusual. I went for higher studies after my under-grad. I took the help of my librarian and took loan from a bank that helped me finish my Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration (PGDBA). PGDBA is a two year program, offered by colleges which are autonomous and affiliated to All India Institute of Technical Education (AICTE). PGDBA is pretty expensive for someone who comes from a middle-class family. Thanks to my good samaritan I did my PGDBA and got a job in a bank.
My first job after PGDBA was as a Junior manager in Centurion Bank of Punjab. I was very excited and happy that I had gotten the dream job at such a young age. I remember my fathers time when it took minimum of twenty years to climb the hierarchy. In my case I had landed as a junior manager in this bank in India. Excited I started my job. I was in charge of customer service, operations and cross-selling. I was trained for all the three job requirements.
The first day I entered my office I saw that the Senior Manager was waiting for me. She handed me instructions as to what were the rules I needed to follow in that branch. With that she handed me a list of goals that I was expected to achieve in that one particular month.
It read something like this:
---> Attain as many as 50-100 new customers every month.
---> Performance on operations will be gauged on the number of demand drafts, transfer of money, and such other functions performed. For every demand draft and such functions bank charged money which helped earn income. It was not the major part of the goal because the money earned in operations was not that great and the bank planned to out source operations in future, which it later did.
---> Cross-sell bancassurance (Insurance of some other company sold through banks. Banks earn commission on such insurance sold) products, mutual fund products of other companies (again banks earned commission for such products) and of course bank products such as loans,
deposits and so on. The target income from cross-selling for a junior manager (that is me) was around 25 million in rupees. UNBELIEVABLE!
This was my Oh No! moment. A point in life where I regretted being a junior manager. My other colleagues who had been in this profession for over two years were sharks in the sea who fought over the bait. I was in the middle of a war! These goals varied based on a person's position in the bank and was a big part of the performance appraisal. It could make or break careers.
I did not know what to do, where to start. Because my college education had not prepared me for this kind of shock or say cut-throat competition where the fittest could survive only by killing and then castrating the other person. When I went home the first day I slept with fear in my mind. I dreaded to go back to work the next day. But, go back I did. I faced the challenge. I started making friends with my colleagues. Gave them the feeling that we could all survive by working as a team rather individuals. I started telling my subordinates to pass over the clients once they reached their goal to the other person who needed it. I know it was not exactly the best strategy but at least it kept us all going. And month after month sales just went up. We met goal after goals. It was fun for some time then after two years when my father said,"There is a proposal." I gave it a strong thought. Why? Because the proposal of a charming guy I had met earlier who had done his MS from UTA in the US and was then working for DELL seemed attractive. My father had told him that I was a post-grad and very ambitious about doing MBA from the US. And the guy was just fine with supporting a wife who had,"Fire in her belly," to achieve things in life. Ok! I know by now you were wondering as to when did,"Desire to do MBA in the US happen." For that read what follows;
All through my job as a junior manager I wondered every single day,"Would MBA from the USA teach me things that I learnt the hard way from my job?" "Would MBA in the USA be better than PGDBA India where I learnt some old concepts and not the current one?"
'Would MBA from the US help me use the concepts in making marketing and selling better than the live and kill other policy that I faced in my job in India. And that is when I told my father that I wanted to go to the US to do MBA. And thats when he planned to get me married.
Fortunately for me the man I liked so much married me and agreed to educate me in the US. As soon as I landed in this country I gave GMAT and got into Santa Clara University.
My first day in school was just amazing. To begin with the classes were flexible as far as timings were concerned and the study material was awesome! All case studies and concepts were very current. Professors taught so well that my concepts in all the courses, especially in finance and international business classes, I enrolled in is so strong that I am proud about it. With 7 quarters done and one more quarter left to graduate I can now proudly boast that I have written numerous papers in finance, given tons of presentation, networked with enough people to last for a life time and trust me learnt that marketing/selling are two different things and are not implemented the way it was applied in the bank, I worked for in India. The MBA program at Santa Clara University has given me both knowledge and confidence.
After getting into the MBA program in the US I feel that American MBA is any day better than Indian MBA (I do not know about IIM's and other country MBA and please note that I speak for the non IIM colleges in India. Again there may be exceptions. As I said this is my 2 cents.)
Today when I look at a case study I know what I am trying to solve, I can understand what alphas and betas are all about, evaluate a company's balance sheet with more than correct accuracy and so on. PGDBA I do not even remember what I learnt. I probably studied one day before the exam and remember doing other things like, attending events, waiting outside the deans office forever for one signature which was unimportant to everyone except the dean... Why did this happen? Because people in MCIM used the PGDBA as a money making source to invest in infrastructures to hike the fees and not to pay the lecturers who teach there. As a result the quality of teachers was so bad that no one learnt anything. Or should I say we hardly learnt anything. That's a tragedy! I wish someday I can go back and start my own management school that matches American standards and help India create better MBA's.
Well for now that is one of my many other dreams.
Looking back from where I come I think the wisest decision I ever made was to do MBA. I am currently concentrating in Finance and International Business and actively looking for job. I do not know when I will get one depending on my visa status, but it does not matter. What matters is that I did my MBA at the right time to get knowledge and concepts straight. So when the economy recovers I will be ready to take a job and apply what I learnt in a much more and productive manner than I did in my earlier job.
MBA is my tool to achieving my goal in life and that is to excel in whatever I do, wherever I do. I strongly recommend my readers to consider MBA if they have had similar experiences to that of mine. Because at the end of the day it is not money but desire to know things better is what matters. And trust me the feeling that you know what you learnt really well is the best thing on earth.
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