The continued endeavour of MBAGuru, INDIA’s Fastest Growing CAT Coaching Institute, to provide unmatched mentorship and guidance to the students at a critical juncture in their careers, resulted in MBAGuru collaborating with the faculty and staff of DCAS College (I.P. University). In what was a fitting finale the last session in a series of career awareness sessions was named as “Institute Awareness Session”, designed specifically for the college students looking to pursue MBA as a career. The session was conducted by Nikhil Chawla (NMIMS), a prominent faculty at MBAGuru, INDIA’s Fastest Growing CAT Coaching Institute. The session extended MBAGuru’s legacy of conducting grand and successful events at DCAS.

The participants benefitted immensely from the awareness of various institutes which specialize in the fields of their interest. The session was an eye-opener for many and helped them identify their target MBA colleges and motivated them to make efforts in that direction.

The faculty enjoyed every moment of the session as the student audience was remarkably interactive, smart and energetic. As a result, the session became a platform for healthy discussion rather than a lecture. By the end of the session, the students were highly charged up and surrounded the faculty to get more information on specific colleges. The success of the session was evident by the fact that a 45 minutes session extended to 1 hour and 15 minutes and left students wanting more!

The Director, Mr. Narendra Mohan at DCAS has been extremely supportive of such activities for the institute’s students. On behalf of MBAGuru, we would like to thank him and other members of the administration of DCAS for all the efforts they put in to bring forth real and practical knowledge within reach of their students. We appreciate the efforts of the administration of DCAS to bring to its students such workshops and sessions to keep their students aware and motivated. If the response to the just concluded series of sessions is any indication, we are sure that the faculty, staff and students at DCAS will continue to partner us in pursuit of such endeavours in the future too.

1 Nov, 2009 ; FICCI commission hall, New Delhi

In a seminar conducted by MBA Guru, India’s fastest growing CAT coachinginstitute, with 15 branches across 7 cities, andMBAUniverse.com, India’s leading management portal, powered by ITM Group of Institutes held in Delhi on Sunday, November 1, 2009, Deans & faculty of MBA institutes like IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Lucknow, MDI Gurgaon and IMI were emphatic about the fact that the importance of MBA from a good institute is immense and you should not think twice before getting your MBA degree NOW. During the jam-packed session at FICCI which was attended by over 500 MBA aspirants, the speakers discussed key areas for success at MBA entrance examinations as well as during and post MBA education.

While the star of the show was none other than Dr. Palash Sen, lead vocalist of India’s premiere Hind-rock band, Euphoria, medical practitioner, chief-mentor and brand ambassador of Roots Education (MBA Guru), the other esteemed speakers of the day included Dr. Rajnish Karki, visiting faculty of IIM Ahmedabad and author of the book ‘Competing With the Best Strategic Management of Indian Companies in a Globalizing Arena’; Dr. Jyotsna Bhatnagar,Chairperson, PGP-HR, MDI Gurgaon; Prof. Jayanti Das, Area Coordinator, ITM Group of Institutes; Dr. C S Venkata Ratnam, Director, IMI Delhi; Dr. Rajeev Kumra, Faculty, IIM Lucknow andSaurbah Saxena, AGM – HR, Network 18. Such a delectable repertoire of speakers was bound to leave the young audience spellbound and it did!

“ India was hardly affected by recession so you need not worry about the time or wait for two years. The time is right to go for an MBA degree. You should prepare yourself for the MBA,” said Dr. Rajnish Karki (vsiting faculty, IIM A).

“MBA is that holistic program which not only enhances your knowledge but prepares you to face the real corporate world”, said Dr. C S Venkata Ratnam, Director, IMI Delhi.

Dr. Jyotsna Bhatnagar (MDI) gave a detailed view of what MBA imbibes in you during two years of the course. She mentioned that apart from making you ready for the corporate world, it also teaches you how to manage, time, yourself and your peers. “MBA is not the magic wand, it is YOU,” Dr. Bhatnagar accentuated on the fact that it is you who is capable of shaping your life in the desired way.

Prof. Jayanti Das said that you need to have a strong vision on where you want to see yourself in next 10 years. Your decision making skills has to be very strong if you want to be the leader, which is the need of the hour for India. “A good leader is one who has a strong vision and decision making skill,” Prof. Das said.

Saurabh Saxena, AGM-HR, Network 18 showed three steps for the transformation from a casual college student to a top corporate honcho. “Three things to help your transformation are direction or focus, passion and attitude,” he said.

Dr. Rajeev Kumra, faculty of IIM Lucknow mentioned that the pedagogy and the curriculum of the MBA Institutes should be judged. “A good MBA institute teaches you how to think, cross functional competence, functional domain knowledge and team work,” Dr. Kumra mentioned.

Balancing your passion and profession

If the first few speakers held the attention of the aspirants through right and relevant inputs, the students’ patient wait for their mentor Dr. Palash Sen’s turn to come and interact with them paid off when the ‘doc came into rock’. The serene atmosphere at the seminar was suddenly infused with immense energy and excitement as Dr. Sen literally took centre-stage from the moment he arrived, and was greeted by a thunderous applause from the entire audience.

Beginning by wondering if he, a doctor, was a misfit among the entire MBA gathering, he went on to answer it in his usual sensible and witty style. “We all are managers in our own little ways. You are managing a lot more than you probably realize: you are managing your family, your friends, your studies, your CAT preparation, and you are even managing your girl-friends/boy-friends and those of others too,” said he as the audience broke into what was going to be the first of many bouts of laughter.

Almost every query during the more than an hour-long interaction was met with 2 responses – the first one being a humorous spontaneous reaction which kept everyone in splits and the more contemplated afterthought following thereafter. The amazing ability to connect with an audience even on a serious platform seemed to have immediate results as the students came up with query after query – right from the exam-anxiety to conflicting career goals and definitions of success and failure.

In the questions asked by the students, he talked about his personal experience. He suggested “Love everything you do, be it studying or practicing your hobby. There is no rule which says that a successful manager cannot play drums. Some of the top CEOs across the globe have extremely interesting hobbies,” he revealed. He said that if you are serious about both, you can manage both the fields easily. “Find happiness in small things in life,” he shared his mantra for his ever happiness.

Dr. Palash spontaneously concurred with the theme set by some of the earlier speakers when he stressed upon understanding yourself better as the key to success. You have to first decide what you really want to do in life. “Don’t go for an MBA or medical profession just because your parents want you to do so. If you are happy doing something else, you should pursue that,” Dr. Sen said. So know your true calling before you put your step forward.

Delving into his association with MBAGuru, he talked about how the education and the commitment of the team at MBAGuru compelled him to endorse it straight from the heart. And as the fastest growing CAT coaching institute in India, MBAGuru is already changing the way MBA preparation is looked at with a strong focus on the individual through its copyrighted YOUnique initiative.

The interaction left the students satiated as well as seeking more. Finally, the students’ continual demand for a few lines from some Euphoria hits was met with 2 complete songs wherein Dr. Palash had the entire 500 strong audience singing with him.

MBAGuru in collaboration with Zakir Husain College (ZHC) has brought to this vibrating campus a series of stimulating sessions to educate students on skills they should develop to achieve success in future and achieve their goals.

The First session was conducted on 6th October, 2009 at ZHC by Mr. Nikhil Chawla, (NMIMS) a prominent faculty at MBAGuru. The objective of the session was to make students aware about the analytical skills required to excel in their future job and higher education entrance examinations and check their Management Quotient.

The MQ Session was an experience that both the faculty and students will remember for a long time. It was a great learning for students’ in terms of how to crack an Aptitude test, how to prepare and especially when they overcome the phobia of mathematics. The success of the session lied in the level of interaction during the session. The ease and comfort with which the students understood the objective of an Aptitude Test learned the approach to crack it and in the end able to answer those questions easily on which they stuck earlier speaks a lot about it. It was a pleasure for the faculty to interact with such a talented and career conscious bunch of students.

In continuation, MBAGuru presented its second session on “How to Crack Personal Interviews”, designed specifically for the college’s 3rd Yr. students. The session was conducted on 7 th October, 2009 at ZHC by Sharad Saxena (IITD, IIMA), a QA, DA and GD/PI faculty at MBAGuru. The session extended MBAGuru’s legacy of conducting grand and successful events at ZHC.

It was a pleasant surprise to find that all the students, who attended the first session, took out time from their busy schedule to attend the second session as well. This amply displays the seriousness that all ZHC students have towards their career. The session was able to achieve its objective of charging up the students about their career and making them ready to face real PIs.

The audience was also highly interactive and the session was laced with intelligent and interesting questions. As a result, the session became a dialogue and discussion rather than a lecture. The highlight of the session was the mock interviews that were conducted at the end of the session for all the students who attended the session. After the mock interviews, a few tips were also given on mastering telephonic interviews.

However, one cannot overemphasize the difference that mock interviews with MBAGuru’s PI experts (from IITs/IIMs) make to the student’s preparation. MBAGuru therefore decided to conduct free mock PIs for all interested ZHC students at their centers itself. Even as we speak, more and more serious and career conscious students from ZHC are coming to our centers to get a first hand experience of a real detailed interview along with the superb MBAGuru faculty.

Looking back, the success of the entire program goes to the unconditional support and motivation provided by the faculty and staff at ZHC who not only organized the sessions but also motivated their students to attend the same in the middle of their college break. We hope that the faculty, staff and students will continue to partner us in pursuit of career awareness for their students in future.

We at MBA Guru believe that if your years in school were bad or boring then here is yet another chance for you to still educate yourself and with this aim of helping students reach out and beyond, we pass on the wisdom, energy and inspiration of people at MBA Guru to thousands of MBA aspirants!

This time, we met up with around 100 students brewing dreams for the world of business management at the Technia College of Advanced Studies. Fundamentals of an effective Group Discussion were shared by Ms. Tanya Agarwal (International GMAT Expert).

Students were made aware of the practicability of group discussions i.e dealing effectively with groups of people is a skill that will serve us in all areas of our lives.  It can also be a challenge- because people as individuals tend to have their own ideas about how they relate to a group, and not all of these ideas work very well in practice.  Therefore, given an environment where each person has a self motive to serve it may be very difficult to make a meaningful and collaborative presence.  At the same time, with regular and guided practice, one can learn to organize one’s thought, give them a logical construction and master all means of communication in a group – be it putting forth their ideas cohesively, having an impressive body language or even displaying good listening skills.

Another important part that was revealed to students during this session was that it doesn’t help if you shout at the top of your voice and speak at great length, what matters most is what you speak and how it creates an impact on the group as well as the evaluators.

As is our practice, at MBA Guru we don’t tell students what to do and what not to because we feel they may forget, however we Involve them because that is the best way to make them understand. Energy was visible when ten students volunteered to participate in a mock Group Discussion. All the ten students were given personalized feedback on their performance during the group discussion. And once the ice was broken there were many other students who wanted to try their luck at their first mock GD. And as usual we ran out of time; however students got into a rush to register for a mock GD session at the nearest MBA Guru centre.

As a followup a session on Personal Interviews, was held and it rocked with more than 80 students present. The session was conducted by Mr. Abhishek Sharma from IIM Indore, and covered the PI basics and few advanced stages. Since all Technia Students would be sitting for placements soon or appearing for higher education exams, the session was made to equip them with approaching PI on a positive note.

Few students from Technia have already visited the MBAGURU centre at Pitampura to avail first hand experience of Interview and could see the value addition from the constructive feedback.

It was wonderful to see, the students coming up to Faculty after the event and sharing questions, doubts, apprehensions regarding their career. And ofcourse an answer to all elusive question of “Why MBA?”

The fact that most of MBAGURU faculty is from IIT/IIM background, is an advantage that our student always enjoys.

The success of the session also goes to the unconditional support and motivation provided by Director Dr. A. K. Srivastava. We also thank for spreading the word about the session. We look forward to the continuous support of the faculty, Especially Dr Ajay in helping us be a part of their pursuit of career awareness for their students.

“Jagriti” was a effort by MBAGuru to create awareness among the students of Tecnia College about their career providing them the right guidance and the way to go forward. The session was conducted on 29th August, 2009 at Tecnia College of Advanced Studies by Mr. Nikhil Chawla, (NMIMS) a prominent faculty at MBAGuru. More than 95+ students were benefitted from the session in terms of the insights on career options, management skills, and problem- solving techniques. The session also focused on testing their Management Quotient (MQ) through a written exam and the analysis was the something that was a new experience for students. The students learned how they can crack the aptitude exams with a totally new approach.

It was a very pleasant experience for the faculty as well to interact with such career oriented and intelligent students. The Faculty enjoyed every moment of it. The interaction of the students with the faculty is evident of the success of the session. After the session the faculty was surrounded by a lot of students who clarified their career specific doubts. The mails from the students reveals about the enthusiasms and the satisfaction from the students side. A glimpse of that is:

thanks mr.nikhil for organising such a wonderful session for tecnians.it was a great pleasure for us to have u among us and definitely we learnt a lot from that session .well as u said some of the guys approached u with questions i also have a question “should we go for a job after completing B.B.A or should we go for a M.B.A

The contribution from Dr. Ajay Pratap Singh and the Director Dr. A. K. Srivastava is deeply appreciated and the session could not be successful without their contribution. They have been extremely supportive in all such activities where the student’s skills are harnessed. We would like to thank him and all other members of the administrative of Tecnia College for extending their full support in bringing students such sessions which prove to be mind boosters and keep students motivated and increase their awareness level.

After the first successful session we will be coming back to the college with scientific analysis of GD/PI which will again give a new outlook to students to see the GD/PI. We look for the same support from college authorities and believe they will continue to partner us in pursuit of career awareness for their students.