Of MDI, Exams and Highlighters

I had this on my mind for a long long time now and since I don’t have anything special to do right now, I think this would help me kill some time…

So we at MDI are having our End Term examinations for the fifth term. It’s been almost two years at MDI and there are few things that still surprise me. I will be talking about them in this post. I hope to change certain trends and expect people to follow them.

There are people with different and (if I may use the term) interesting idiosyncrasies. And suddenly these are highlighted during the examinations.

1.People would take at least 4 different shades of highlighters to the examination hall and highlight their answer sheets as if it was an entry for drawing competition.

2.I am not talking about someone with Arts background (we have a diverse range of profiles in our batch), but I am also talking about people who have spent five years in the industry, people who most probably have never touched anything similar to a colored pen in their lives before MDI and people who have been toppers all their lives (ofcourse before coming to MDI).

3.Yes, there are people who would not use highlighters in examinations but surprisingly they are amongst the lowest ranked people at MDI. I see a high correlation between the number of different shades, amount of color on your answer sheet and beauty of the handwriting with the grades.

4.There are a few statistical aberrations. For example, I can vouch for the current topper at MDI, she happens to be a very god friend and she does not uses these colored highlighters.

5.I have never seen someone with bad handwriting get good marks. I can not think of an aberration in this one. You have to have a good hand writing.

6.You should be able to use English effectively. I have seen people talking totally arbit stuff and getting applause and accolades from professors because the arguments were constructed beautifully. I can recall one recent incident when the participant was saying something to the effect that Mercedes is priced lower than Maruti 800, the professor agreed and the participant was given highest marks.

7.And from the above few lines, it would be clear to you (if someone actually took time to read the entire post) that I can never get good marks in management education.

8.And finally as usual the opinions expressed here are solely my own.

Why is the question …

The very next thing that comes to my mind – why does something like this happen at a place like MDI with people like us? I think the answer is simple. Basic human psychology. Again I am no expert on the topic, infact I don’t even know 0.00001% of the things. I can, however, make certain assumptions and see that people follow suit without thinking and this is why we see answer sheets spread with yellow, orange, green, blue and what not colors. And ye I forgot to mention the three different colors of pens used by people – Blue, Green and Black.

Fundas for Management Education

1.Get your handwriting fixed. If you want to do well and subsequently get a nice job, get the handwriting in order.

2.Learn English. Join some call centre, work there for some time before coming to a Business School. No matter what people say, your command over language commands a commanding premium in the market 😉

More to come later …