Summers in IIMs : A Hard Hitter

Here is a primer on the summers process at IIMs and other B-schools

FAQ

1. Are girls really preferred in summers?
1. Ahem!! Water is the most precious thing in desert. Investment Banks(IBs) and consults are terribly short of XX chromosomes. IBs need people to work for long hours, they want people in office working for 16-17 hours/day. If there are no girls, people won't have the motivation to stay in office. QED!!

The shortlist is based on 2 factors : 1. Resume and 2. Your photo in the placement brochure that has been distributed to the company.
My research shows that for a fresher girl with average looks and IT-work girl with good looks have almost equal probability of geting IB/consult shortlist! The company has some predetermined notions about each candidate. And they are trying to fit those notions in the interview. So if you've minimum quant skills and minimum communication skills, both fresher and IT-work ex girl has equal chance of making to IBs/consults.
Though from the bottom of my heart, I can vouch for the fact that an average girl has much better communication skills as compared to an average boy! The reasons are numerous, the simplest being a large portion of MBA students are engineers (70-80%). Owing to bad M:F ratios in engineering, a boy is not very comfortable or confident when he talks to a girl, but vice versa is almost always never true.
And yeah, am not painting an anti-feminist picture here!

2. I have high IT work-ex, what the heck?
2. Summers is a 2-months process. The IBs need fresh minds. work-ex people (espl. high work-ex) people need some time to unlearn the stuff they learnt in their earlier organization. And this is not quite possible in 2 months of summer training. Hence the problem So unless you ve high financial /relevant work-ex, LehmanBrothershereIcome is very very tough ( Even getting a shortlist is a luxury)
Exception being : Refer Question no 1

3. I am non-IIT/BITS, why am not getting the shortlists?
3. Again alumni factor comes into picture. IIT/BITS have proven excepetional track record for most of its alumni which may not be the case for non-branded colleges.So when a company wants to choose a shortlist of say 20 people, the safest bet is to choose a fair no of branded people. The reason being the company is more or less sure that even if they make a mistake in selection process, 80-90% of branded people will be really good! Now this may not be the case of people from unbranded colleges! QED

4. I took a job which I don't want just because of slot pressure.
4. the feeling of being among the last few to get placed is also terrible.The main agony is not at all that you are not getting the job. The major issue is all others in your peer group are getting summers.If you can handle the pressure, awesome As has already been discussed, slot is not the criteria to judge. Thus ideally there should not be *the terrible feeling*.Though one point I would like to make is that most of the people from non-IIT/BITS colleges have not experienced the kind of competiton that exists in the IIMs. Hence they might crumble beacuse of *the terrible feeling* as I have observed it in IIML.Waise some people in IIML waited till slot 3 because their dream company was coming then!This not only shows the patience but also shows the fact these people knew what exactly they want to do in life!

Last but not the least Summer process is not-the most optimum process. In fact it as good as an arranged marriage .This is a statistically proven fact :In summers, you are interviewed for approx 30 minutes and they hire you for 2 months!In arranged marriage, the bride-groom date each other for 3-4 days and get married. I ve assumed that average married life =25 years.So a CAT Quant student can easily tell that the ratios are almost equal!

Overall summers is a mayhem of emotions. Agony, ecstasy, dreams, crashes are all packed in a thriller of 3 days.

And the final nail in the coffin:
For heaven's sake , a MBA from IIM or otherwise, is not a passport to success. Only 5-10% of the alumni of any institute have done extremely well in life.50% of alumni have done reasonably well in life. And the rest have terribly struggled in life. Too much was expected out of them because of IIM MBA tag, which they just could not deliver! It's not the IIMA brand or IB summers that makes the difference. 10-15 years the down the line, all factors will get averaged out. It's you who makes the difference!