I’m not ‘good’ at Maths. I’m ‘good’ at English in the way most engineers are good at Maths and ‘bad’ at Maths in the way most engineers are bad at English.

And the MBA admission procedure in India seems to have no place for me as far as the really good B-schools are concerned. I’m compelled to ask why is that so? Won’t people like me make good enough managers, if not better than our counterparts?

The cut-offs for calls are usually higher for quantitative sections and lower for verbal/logical sections implying that majority of the candidates are better at quantitative sections than the verbal/logical sections. The most widely cited reason for the same is that most candidates have engineering background which naturally makes them good at Maths but not so good at English. However, lately it has been seen that more and more non-engineering students are now appearing for MBA entrances but have difficulty in securing admission at the best B-schools in India. The B-schools seem to have addressed this problem superficially by giving marks for “academic diversity” to candidates from non-engineering backgrounds *after* the GDPI process.

What is the point of this exercise?

If a candidate finds the quantitative sections too much to deal with or is unable to clear the unbelievable QA cut-offs, what good would “academic diversity” do for such a candidate? If B-schools really wanted candidates from non-engineering backgrounds, they would do better by accommodating them at a pre-GDPI level rather than a post-GDPI level.

It is no secret that admission procedures in our country are messed up but I believe there are a lot of candidates like me who lose out because we are in the minority.

I have never liked the idea of prolonged reservations or extra marks for various attributes because the system always needs to be tweaked at a more basic level and tweaked in a much more simpler way. There is absolutely no need for comprehensive changes that prove to be ineffectual ultimately. There is a need for sincerity in making changes when on talks about them though.