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A new beginning . . . 2005
How I became an MBA?

Its 1st January - the new year has just started and for me with placements round the corner and NITIE life coming to an end, the new year will indeed usher in a new beginning. I was reading Manish Chauhan's Blog [http://manishchauhan.blogspot.com/] and found his recent posts about friends and his lucky-and-intelligent friend Timir quite near to what's going on in my own mind nowadays; so thought why not pen it down(rather type it down).
As NITIE comes to an end I am reflecting to around 11/2 years back. I was never gung-ho about management as a career path, actually had thought about giving GRE and doing an MS. My father kept on pursuing with me to try for an MBA rather than a techie thing - but I always thought I was made to be a techie (dunno why?). He tried for 3 years before he could succeed. It was March and he was (I could guess) tired of trying to change my mind about MS. Both of us were standing on the railway station; I was leaving back for my college after Holi vacation. At home we had just ended our discussion with my words - "but I feel I am more suited for an MS . . .". Minutes before the train approached, he said - "Observe your life, look at your personality - you have always been very active in extra-curricular, exceptionally brilliant at your language and communication skills - at this age one of your articles was published in a newspaper; some others of your age don't even read the Edit page regularly. Such people are more suited to a people facing career like Management rather than a lonely work of MS". Well . . . that was the last straw, his words kept echoing within me as the train chugged out of the station and the whole of next week.
I was still skeptical, now primarily because I knew that many aspirants had been preparing for as long as 2 years and I was hardly few months away from CAT. But Nimish, my pal gave me confidence. He had same thoughts as my father; personality is what it takes to be an MBA, everything else can be developed. A few practice tests and MBA was within reach. Well . . that was the completion of my turnaround from GRE to MBA.
CAT came and went - I had decided not to give any other allied MBA exams for two reasons. One, I wanted to be in a Top B-School and wanted no compromises and two, my semester exams clashed with most other tests. This is where my luck started working for me. I didn't know much about NITIE - surely not that it is in Top 10, so was not going to apply. But a friend who knew my position about exams clashing with semesters coaxed me into filling the form for NITIE on the argument that its exam was after our semesters. I did fill in NITIE but was so careless I had filled in the wrong choice for center of examination. To correct my mistake I sent another form which reached after the deadline. In spite of all this goof up, I was allowed to appear thanks to our chill Admin staff :D.
The NITIE exam was 2 days after our practicals ended, I hadn't been in touch with MBA type Q's since 1 month - and my sole preparation was flipping pages of a practice test a night before the test. I still feel I did not deserve to get selected with that amount of prep, but got through and got an interview call. . . more in the next post (since this has become long enough)

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