The Education of an Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad Student

I realize most of my posts have been focusing on the ridiculous stories that have occurred while I am away from school, but since it's studying abroad that brought me here in the first place, and since some of you have asked, I thought I would tell you a bit about what it's like attending the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A).

First I should explain a bit about IIM-A, itself. It is, by most measures the most difficult business school in Asia -- and arguably the world -- to which to be accepted. In order to just get an admissions interview, applicants must score in the 99.4 percentile of their version of the GMAT. Once enrolled, the first year, as many students have put it, is "hell." They literally are forced to work 16-18 hours per day, taking an unreal courseload. Thankfully, by the time their second year rolls around they have much more free time, though it seems the experience of surviving the first year never dissipates (and they all like bragging about how little sleep they get -- even now when they have far less work)!

That they are the elite business students in India is not a fact lost on them, as many of the students here are among the more arrogant people I've ever been around. An amusing anecdote to prove this is that in working on papers and powerpoints (or PPTs as they refer to them), I often take it upon myself to make sure the grammar is perfect. As English is the second (or third) language for them, it's absolutely understandable that they make grammatical errors (afterall I'd hate for you to see some of the papers I've written in German). What never ceases to amaze me though is that after nearly every time I have done some proofreading and edits, they have reversed much of my correct grammar for their poor grammar immediately before turning it in. It doesn't bother me -- as clearly we are all being graded together -- it's just that their hubris simply amazes me sometimes.

Indian education -- at least at the University level -- strikes me as far different from that in America. At UCLA, my education was broad and really stressed critical thinking, and analyzing about how various, seemingly unrelated concepts could be pieced together. At IIM-A, I find the exact opposite to be true. There is definitely a sense of the Professor being the absolute authority on the issues they teach, and the focus of the education and tests is more on rote memorization than critically examining issues.

The best example I can think of to highlight this lack of intellectual curiosity occured in my Intellectual Property class (which was fantastic, by the way). We had a group final paper (or "reflective note" as they call it) assigned to us. For it, the assignment was to write about ANYTHING having to do with intellectual property: it could be in the past, present or future; it could be about India, the EU, or the World; it could be about a company, it could be about a country , or it could be all of the above. What did my group decide to write on?

"How does one apply for a patent in India? Is this the same or different as in the US?"

Could we have possibly picked a less interesting topic?

The system of classes for them is like being on a quarter - quarter system. I felt that classes at UCLA, which were 10 weeks, moved quickly, however, at IIM-A, many of their classes last just a couple to a few weeks. This certainly feeds into their stressful, cramming mentality. It also, I suspect, is the underlying culprit for an email sent that is humorous in its sheer audacity. Again, in the Intellectual Property class, we read a lot of legal cases, many of which were recent or even current. One student, a couple of weeks after our "endterm examination" sent out a link to an update to a case we had discussed. His email received this response from a classmate (sent to the entire class listserv):

"Dude
The course is over.
So just mail such snippets directly to the professor.
Not many people have vested interests in this lingering case..."

This of course ignores the fact that some of us -- myself included -- actually do have an interest. I think this highlights the tension between rote memorization and critical thinking.

Moving beyond the students, the Professors, meanwhile, have all been top-notch, and, despite the worries of many of us from Georgetown, speak reasonably good English. The one thing I don't think I can ever adjust to (despite the Indian students and faculty thinking nothing of it) is how frivolously they change class days and times. One morning I received an email at 11:20 AM from a Professor whose class was scheduled for 4PM that day saying that, actually, class would now be held in ten minutes at 11:30 AM. I've had the locations of classes change, the times of classes change, the days of classes change, and I've had extra classes added on to the existing course schedule. I've had some classes that met for four-hours per day for eight days in a row, and another class which met only ten times total, spread out, on random days, in a four week period.

Despite the above, it really has been such a positive experience studying at IIM-A. I think there is a lot of ridiculousness inherent at the school, and there has been a ton to adjust to, but that's a huge part of the reason I came here (afterall, Georgetown also lets you study abroad at Oxford University, which would likely be more intellectual, but would result in far less entertaining stories). It's been great to be around India's "best and brightest," but I am happy to be returning to my life as an American student shortly.

Some shots of campus: