Problems Students face during MBA Admissions and Studies in Share Now that a new MBA entrance season is about to begin, many of you must have already started preparing for CAT, CMAT, XAT, etc. Quite a few amongst you must be appearing for these exams for the second or third time. You may be well aware of the problems I am going to mention here. However, if it is going to be your first attempt, you need to be aware of the problems that the present MBA Admission system puts forward to our students. Let’s have a look at the problems that students face during MBA Admissions. 1) Too many Entrance Exams. One of the biggest problems that MBA students face during MBA seasons is that there are too many entrance exams which need to be taken by students if they wish to get admission in top colleges of the country and do not want to put all stakes only on CAT (especially due to high unpredictability since CAT has gone online). For example, if I apply only for CAT, I miss out on various reputed colleges such as XLRI, JBIMS, IRMA, SCMHRD, NMIMS, SIBM, TISS, MICA, GIM, XIM-B, etc. So, if one wants to have a chance of getting admissions in all of these colleges, he/she would have to appear for CAT, XAT, IIFT, NMAT, SNAP, MICAT, CMAT, etc. The student has to pay around 1500 Rs. or more for each and every exam that he wishes to appear for. Entrance exams are the cash cows of these institutions which makes them a lot of money. Students who are not financially very strong cannot afford to spend thousands just to apply for entrance exams. So, they are left with no choice but to select one or two exams from these and forget about the remaining colleges. 2) Filling too many College Forms As if applying for the different entrance exams was not enough, the student has to then fill the forms of different colleges that he wants to be considered for. This means that the student has to make a choice of colleges now. For example, let’s assume that you filled all the above entrance exam forms and are now poorer by Rs. 5000 – 10000 or more. Is it ethical now for the colleges to ask you to shell out another 1500 per college that you wish to apply? (I am using Rs. 1500 as an example. Some colleges charge much more while a few charge lesser amount) IIM’s conduct CAT and they do not ask you to apply separately for any IIM. However, there are many other colleges that accept CAT scores and until and unless you are in the top 1 percentile, you cannot be sure of being called by the ‘real IIM’s’ (Even 99%ile is not safe now). So, the only logical choice that remains with the student is to apply for all the other top colleges which accept CAT score. This means that the student has to apply for at least 5 to 10 other colleges which he believes are within his reach. Applying to these colleges means paying another 15000 – 20000 Rs., if not more. 3) Lack of Transparency After a student pays Rs. 30000 – 35000 wishing to get admission into one of his dream colleges, you would expect the process of admission to be one of the most transparent processes, right? Well, you are wrong. Transparency in admission process is an alien word to most B-Schools in India. Even the IIM’s are not fully transparent. The following issues keep haunting students even after the above payments: Change of admission processes at any time Change in criteria Backdoor entries and Management Seats (Yes, this does happen) Criteria that nearly eliminates you out of the race in one stroke. (IIM A has nearly eliminated every male Mumbai university engineer) 4) Waiting list movements - Weeks after you are already in another B-School Let’s assume that there is a student who appears for CAT. He has applied to 2 colleges – A and B. Now, he knows that College A is better than College B but he would be ready to go to college B if he does not get admission in college A. So this guy gets admission in college B and is waitlisted in college A. As he has to make a choice or his seat in college B would be given to the next guy in waitlist, he decides to join college B for now while he waits for College A waitlist to move. Now, after 2-3 few weeks of joining College B, he comes to know that his waitlist in college A has cleared and he can join it. The student is in a dilemma now. Should he leave college B and join college A? If he does so, he would lose a large sum of money that he has paid by that time to college B. Hey Rahul, get out of the line. Your waitlist cleared. Does this example ring bells in your ears? Many MBA students must have faced such a dilemma. What’s worse is that a few B-Schools do not even disclose the waitlist number to the students. This brings forward a dicey situation in front of the student. He is unsure of his chances and may end up taking whatever is available or he stands losing both. 5) Many B-schools charge unreasonable fees from its students Nearly all the B-schools have been increasing their fees consistently over the few years. Though this may be seen as necessary for many colleges that spend a lot on the education and training of their students, this also gives the ‘not so good colleges’ a chance to demand unreasonable fees from the students without bringing about any change in the quality of education or facilities provided to the students. There are many ‘not so well known’ colleges that charge exorbitant fees from the student without any kind of facility just because top colleges are charging similar amounts. 6) Misleading Claims and Advertisements Many small B-Schools and even some reputed B- Schools have to advertise about their colleges in order to bring students to their programmes. Advertising is not an offence. In fact, good advertising can help students choose MBA colleges properly. But, most of the advertisements in the newspapers or on the websites are generally misleading and are filled with false claims never backed by proof. IIPM is so difficult to crack that all top students have to make do with IIM’s So, it is not difficult to find many different colleges; all claiming to be the number 1 college in India or in their respective states. The lives of many students get ruined due to these misleading advertisements and the government seems to be making no efforts to save students from being wooed by false promises. Conclusion Overall, it looks as if students are considered to be nothing more than cash cows. Every B-school wants to milk as much money out of it as possible every year. If you are not financially very strong and are not well-informed, you might find it very difficult to finish your MBA on a positive note. Have something to say on the topic ?? pp
Posted on: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 16:11:13 +0000
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