The B-School Problem

Over the last 3 month, I reviewed the CVs of more than 15% of the first-year MBA batch at IIM Calcutta. At Joka, there’s this deeply embedded culture, seniors helping juniors with resumes, mock interviews etc and I ended up going through the CVs of around 75 out of 480 people. Resume reviews & career guidances (check out my take on building careers here) tend to get personal with people sharing their stories, their anxieties, their plans. It truly was a privilege to be let in by so many people.

But what stayed with me wasn’t just what was in those CV pointers but the discomfort that came back from my own early days at IIM Calcutta. A year into the MBA, I found myself returning to the same conclusion I had on Day 1 - in this place, passion doesn’t really matter. The system propagates something else entirely — the ability to suppress your personality, to optimise endlessly, to trade exploration for structure, and to chase after arbitrary standards set by society.

And what’s worse is, I don’t even push back anymore. I don’t agree with it, but I’ve stopped resisting. I entered thinking I would change at least some part of the culture here and I’ll be honest - I did try. But you cannot win against an indoctrinated herd made to believe that the path to success flows through deference to the “system”.

This essay aims to break down what a typical B-School student (both in India & beyond) looks like - what are their backgrounds, what are their dreams and what are their insecurities. In an attempt to do so, I might come off as elitist, critical or judgemental but that I have tried to be empathetic to the varying privileges and pressures people come with. That being said, I do apologise in advance if my arguments seem inappropriate or outright wrong.

Overachievers dream smaller

Let’s define how a traditional overachiever at B-School looks like. An IIM Cal student with an undergrad from IIT Bombay, having worked at consulting firms like Kearney or another IIM Cal student with an undergrad from IIT Delhi with experience at Elevation Capital are people with achievements people literally die for under their belt. These are individuals who’ll have to work very hard to “fail” in life per the conventional definition of failure.

Interacting with them, what drove me insane was how shallow their belief in their own abilities is. We are talking about people who’ve cleared the toughest exams in the world, worked at the best firms in the world and yet they doubt if they are even good enough for a shortlist. They over-prepare, over-optimise, over-think, terrified that one slip will break their “aura”. The higher one climb, the more fragile one becomes.

I try to start a review by getting to know a person and the best way to do so professionally is to learn about their goals and why they desire it. At an IIM, I wasn’t expecting out of the box answers on the goal, it’s your standard consulting, IB, PM etc but what I was curious about was the reason for the goal. What came as a shocking realization to me was that there was no real reason. A person dreamed to get into consulting not because he cared, but because everyone else cares. The entire life trajectory for 100s of people started seeming like a checklist - clear JEE, crack CAT, get McKinsey, land PPO. Wanting to work at McKinsey isn’t wrong. I believe that consulting has a lot to offer but it’s the reason why. What pulls you towards consulting or IB or trading? For many, it's the clearest, most structured path to the upward mobility this institution promises. But the cost of that clarity is conformity.

The irony is brutal. The people with the most privilege, pedigree and potential end up dreaming the smallest. They don’t explore, they conform. They don’t take risks, they optimise. They trade imagination for safety and call it strategy. They trade desire for conformity, and call it ambition.

Relatively average

Of the 75 resumes that I reviewed, only about 15 fell into this over-achiever category. The rest were “average”. I call them average not because their intellect is any lesser than that of our beloved overachiever but because they missed the optimization game. These are individuals who tried and failed at UPSC who come from a non-IIT/SRCC undergrads with work experience at mid-tier firms like TCS or small start-ups. In the pecking order of IIMs, you are neither an overachiever nor a cool diversity hire, you exist to fill the big fat middle of the normal distribution curve.

I find this categorization incredibly hilarious. I’ve seen friends come in as confident individuals turning into a soup of insecurities because the system labelled them as average without judging their capabilities. How do I know that a Masters in Physics student is average at business studies? I’ve heard stories of doctors who were burned out after 4 years of hellishly long hours or UPSC aspirants who couldn’t make it because they couldn’t rote learn 25000 facts. This system of checklists ensures that an individual is stripped off of all context and seen simply as a list of numbers.

These are qualified individuals are often invisible to “the elite MBA” groups and to prove their worth, they end up adapting the MBA template. The way curious, original people are reshaped into hierarchy-sycophants is almost artistic. I once interviewed a junior who was a trained Bharatnatyam dancer featured in national media talking endlessly only about “being a national semi-finalist in a case competition”. It’s not that they don’t have interesting stories, it’s that in their heads, the stories don’t fit the template that gets you noticed.

Even within the “average,” there’s a pecking order. Some manage to squeeze into the outer rings of top-tier shortlists, while others end up in obscure roles no one brags about. That difference, often decided by arbitrary filters, drastically rewrites how people see themselves. Suddenly, peers who once felt equal are now left behind in the average pool while they rise to the rank of an overachiever.

At least the “average” still get to throw their hat in this ring of absurdity. They chase the shortlists, write the copy-paste goals, and perform the rituals. It might be hollow, but at least it keeps them on the field. There are a set of people who crack an elite MBA thirsty for knowledge and upskilling who are left stranded. They’re simply erased from the hierarchy, sitting on the sidelines, watching the drama unfold.

The why even dream set

I’ve not had the privilege to help very many individuals who were completely lost in this circus of validations. Partially I am to blame for this, I might have seemed unapproachable, partially was self-rejection which I cannot help. That being said, some of my friends might fall in this set and I’ve had the opportunity to learn more about their journeys through this “premier institution”.

I’ll start with what the other 2 strata think about them. “What gives them the audacity to dream at our level” - might encapsulate the most prevalent emotion in the other 2 better off groups. These individuals, who often join a Business School to learn business are left stranded in what is a race towards fancy jobs. They join hoping to learn the nuances of business administration but are thrown into a classroom that assumes you are fluent enough to give a presidential election speech, know enough english to write a shakespearean play and understand enough math to calculate the probability of Chandrayaan-4 landing on the moon. Of course, none of these are true.

I’ll be honest, I think it’s alright to expect the things that the classrooms expect in an “elite” MBA program. It’s as elitist as it gets, but some institutions need to challenge individuals to the point of breaking and if every level of education is democratized enough to be inclusive academically, we risk losing the opportunity to create ground breaking individuals. That being said, if you do choose to admit students who do not fit this criteria, why leave them hanging? There’s a lot to say here, but I’ll stop because I know the futility of critiquing the design here and focus on what bugs me the most - the inherently missing desire in these institutions.

Why does an IIM Calcutta graduate not dream?

For the longest time I lay the blame squarely at the system’s feet, I still do to a great extent. Harnidh Kaur (Head of WTFund) put it well - an MBA nudges you very strongly in very typical directions. The incentives here are designed to funnel you in one direction, shortlists, PPOs, “prestige” roles. Very few fight against it, and even fewer succeed. I generally prefer not quoting exact things in my essays, but I must add this section from Jeff Bezos’ last shareholder letter:

Differentiation is Survival and the Universe Wants You to be Typical

This is my last annual shareholder letter as the CEO of Amazon, and I have one last thing of utmost importance I feel compelled to teach. I hope all Amazonians take it to heart.

Here is a passage from Richard Dawkins’ (extraordinary) book The Blind Watchmaker. It’s about a basic fact of biology.

“Staving off death is a thing that you have to work at. Left to itself – and that is what it is when it dies – the body tends to revert to a state of equilibrium with its environment. If you measure some quantity such as the temperature, the acidity, the water content or the electrical potential in a living body, you will typically find that it is markedly different from the corresponding measure in the surroundings. Our bodies, for instance, are usually hotter than our surroundings, and in cold climates they have to work hard to maintain the differential. When we die the work stops, the temperature differential starts to disappear, and we end up the same temperature as our surroundings. Not all animals work so hard to avoid coming into equilibrium with their surrounding temperature, but all animals do some comparable work. For instance, in a dry country, animals and plants work to maintain the fluid content of their cells, work against a natural tendency for water to flow from them into the dry outside world. If they fail they die. More generally, if living things didn’t work actively to prevent it, they would eventually merge into their surroundings, and cease to exist as autonomous beings. That is what happens when they die.”

While the passage is not intended as a metaphor, it’s nevertheless a fantastic one, and very relevant to Amazon. I would argue that it’s relevant to all companies and all institutions and to each of our individual lives too. In what ways does the world pull at you in an attempt to make you normal? How much work does it take to maintain your distinctiveness? To keep alive the thing or things that make you special?

At IIM Calcutta, I’ve achieved what most enter desiring to reach. I interned at Bain & Co where I was fortunate enough to receive a full-time offer. I was selected for the coveted CEMS MiM exchange dual degree at amongst the best exchange schools offered at IIMC. All of these “normal” achievements came easily to me. What I struggle with everyday is to keep what set me apart alive, to not give into the outside environment that lures me into a fake sense of success. The system rewards me for blending in, but all I want is to resist dissolving into the sameness.

That being said, it’s not just the system at fault. I was discussing this phenomenon with a friend and I in a fit of rage argued that “these people with privilege are the weakest”. My friend shot back and explained how the fear of failing after high baselines expectations are set kick in. Think about it, if you’ve already studied at the top IITs, worked in marquee firms, and now entered IIM Calcutta, how do you top that? The baseline itself is intimidating. Any move that isn’t an obvious “next level” win is seen as regression. So you pick the safe track, you blend in, you optimize for not slipping rather than for breaking out.

And that’s the real trap. It’s not that people lack ambition, it’s that ambition gets domesticated into what looks respectable. You stop chasing what once set your heart on fire and instead chase what will not embarrass you at alumni reunions. The irony is, both extremes end up in the same place. The ones too scared to dream never start, the ones too scared to fail never dare. And in both cases, we lose the raw spark that brought us here in the first place.

It’s not all bad

I’ve painted my alma mater in an incredibly negative light. To be fair, I’ve come out of an MBA much more knowledgeable than I did walking in. The concepts of accounting, microeconomics, game theory, strategy & macro help me understand the world and business manifolds better. This critique wasn’t meant to be an IIM bashing piece. My objective was to be look closely at the root of an issue that made me hate my first day at Joka - the absence of ambition.