SP Jain Global MBA Program

After finishing my Msc I headed back to Dubai. Not sure what to do I probably figured I would be heading into full time employment. However it seems what lay in the future was something else…..

After considerable thought I decided to enter the selection process for the MBA program in the Dubai campus of SP Jain. At first I thought it would be absolute hell considering they choose only 200 students a year out of the 2000 students that apply for the course. And upon reading blog posts of other candidates who underwent a similar selection process it sounded tiring. However I decided to go for it.

The selection was a three tiered one, similar in structure to the graduate recruitment process I underwent at Citigroup. There was to be a written examination, followed by a Group Discussion and Personal Interview.

Once I confirmed from students that the written examination was just like the one in the GMAT examinations the task was simplified greatly. Now all I had to do was familiarize myself with he format of the examination. There could be no better book to do this with than the great Princeton Review study books. Upon going through them with sufficient detail I came to know what was expected of me. This greatly helped in the examination as I could circumvent the common mistakes people often make in such examinations, I also saved a lot of precious time by not needing to read the explanation on how to answer each section.

Apparently dress code plays a major factor and required me to wear a pretty formal suit along with a tie. Usually I would think this to be silly as the majority of the crowd attending the institution are very informally dressed and anything but posh in appearance. But considering the only guys who were selected in my batch wore suits (me and another dude).

Now the written test seemed pretty easy, with me completing my strong points first. The General Knowledge (last section in the question paper) and the English grammar correction sections seemed to be the easiest and were tackled first. After that came the data sufficiency which included some mathematical questions. At first I seemed concerned that I seemed to have completed the written test way before everyone but after throughly checking all sides of the question paper I was satisfied. We were allocated 90 minutes to complete this stage.
Upon completion of the written test I handed in both the question and answer sheets only to receive another question paper in return for it !!! This consisted of two essay questions, something that was familiar to me again.

The second part of the written examination required me to answer why I wanted to undertake his course and the other asked me to describe a problem I faced at some point in my life and how I overcame it, now I think they would prefer if a work related situation was described here. We were given 20 minutes to answer each essay question.
After the second part of the written examination we were given a 30 minute break. I met the other guys who were in the selection process with me outside the campus during this time. Most of the guys were all undergraduates from India and there were two others who were pretty qualified. One was a guy who had worked for the past year half at Infosys and seemed a pretty smart dude. The other was someone who had completed his Msc and MBA in IT management after his degree course and now was here to do his MBA in something I dont remember; this guy seemed pretty full of himself though he seemed to know his stuff.

After our lunch break came the personal interview. This time there were only five of us guys and two mallu chicks (looks like the hot arab chick and the other mallu boy got sent back till her test results came in). This was a fairly quick process with the dean Mr. Jain verifying our credentials (by merely scanning the application form) and repeating the essay question asking us why we wished to undergo the MBA course.

The group discussion session started after a long wait. The wait was primarily due to the slow and delayed arrival of some huge mallu chick in a saree. We were then told that the topic for group discussion was “Is India an emerging country?“, that we could speak for and against the topic. Everyone being Indian’s obviously went for the topic and spoke positive points on the topic. According to me I absolutely excelled in this stage. I put forward several positive points and topics for discussion. In fact every time the group fumbled for points I took the initiative and gave someone or the other something to analyze. The best thing I possibly did was keep track of time and when I sensed that our time was approaching an end, I addressed the entire group and asked them to summarize our topic of discussion and the content we described. We then concluded to reflect our point of view. This stage probably took 20 minutes or so.

Needless to say I was accepted to undertake this course. Starting this January 2007 I will be joining the Singapore campus of SP Jain to start my course. After six months I will then transfer to the Dubai campus of SP Jain to complete this course.

I guess I am looking forward to going to Singapore though I doubt I will have any real time to have any fun. Yay to going to another exotic city I guess ?