“Hello and welcome ladies, gentlemen and inconsequential scum-beings from the outer fringes of the galaxy”. If I were to have my way, those would be the opening lines of the ‘Exceptionally Deceiving B-School Oscars 2006’. Honestly, if I were to have my way at all, there would actually be a ‘Deceiving B-School Oscars’ every year – “Commemorating the merciless, heartless conduct of top B-schools in the country” – that, of course, would be the awards’ tag-line. And did you ask why do we have a tag-line at all? Well, that is primarily because it is fashionable to have a tag-line for everything today. So I wake up in the morning and start my day sitting on the pot – ‘Classic, Stinky, and nothing else’. I move on to brush my teeth in the wash-basin – ‘Dirty, perennially choked piece of pointless ceramic’. So the story goes about tag-lines, but we digress.

And we come back on track again. Without further ado about stinky toilets – ‘Functioning flushes form fabulous fantasies’, let us get straight to the point and kick off the awards…err, the awards ceremony.

  1. Multiple Fraudulent Revenue Stream Award
Symbiosis Group of a xrilliofentiwillion Institutes, All over the Milky Way
This year’s top honours are bagged by Symbiosis – an education giant that has so many business schools on its list that on the latest (and super-prestigious) ‘Maharashtra’s Top 1000 Business Schools’, more than half are Symbi (as it is ‘fondly’ called) institutes. So much for Symbi’s undying commitment towards making an MBA out of every engineer, doctor, lawyer and street-side mongrel!
Symbi snatches the Oscar from its nearest rivals (and quite a few of them, too) by sheer dint of its innovative use of size. While unsuspecting wannabe MBAs dig deep within their cash reservoirs to stitch together five hundred whole rupees to register for the Symbiosis National Aptitude Test (SNAP), Symbi mercilessly snaps all their necks and on the very next registration page asks them to select the institutes they would want to apply to. The catch? You are required to pay in excess of Rs 1,200 for every institute you are interested in. Neat, eh? You bet it is. The money, needless to say, is pumped right back into the system. Symbi builds more institutes to reap more cash which then builds more institutes…it’s a vicious circle, don’t you think? In effect, over the years, Symbi’s repertoire has now expanded to generously include the ‘Symbiosis Institute of Business Technology for Engineers’ and the ‘Symbiosis School of Management for Deranged Monkeys’.

  1. Award for Maximum Opaque Black Holes
S P Jain Institute of Management Research, Mumbai
Transparency is not a basic (or even expected) B-School selection procedure parameter, but the boffins at SPJIMR have this year tasted the inimitable high of success, after years of a relentless pursuit of making their admission process as unfathomable and opaque as possible. Group Interviews, questions on ‘character, morals, values and ethics’ were some of the most crucial elements that made the goal achievable. Young men and women applying next year to SPJIMR: the interview questions are some of the simplest you will ever answer – “In case you are offered a bribe to blah blah, will you accept it?” Try answering, “Of course I will. What kind of silly question is that?” At the time of answering, roll your eyes, stick your tongue out and generally act as if the panel has lost its bearings. It will surely ease the pressure for your peers accompanying you at the GIs.

  1. Award for Most Innovative Revenue Generation Strategies
Management Development Institute, Gurgaon
When it comes to developing hitherto unheard of strategies for maximizing revenue generated from the sale of admission forms, MDI is in a stratospheric league of its own. None of the institutes, even with their Rs 1,000+ admission form pricing, come close to MDI’s fool-proof methodologies. MDI requires applicants to fill ‘bubbles’ in the admission form in pen. Yes, you read that right. Mistakes, you must have guessed by now, entail our desperate wannabe MBA to purchase a second form. Then a third. And then a fourth. So the trick lies in maximizing the probability of form-filling errors. The answer, just change the ordering of the ‘bubbles’ to start with a ‘1’ instead of a ‘0’. For next year, pilot projects being beta-tested currently include ordering the ‘bubbles’ using a random number generator. So the bubbles will now be randomly ordered instead of 0-9. Ah, I think MDI should be pre-awarded this award for the next three and a half decades.

  1. Lifetime Achievement Award for Achieving Nothing At All
Indian Institute of Planning and Management, Swimming Pool equipped Branches across India
Mr Pony-Tail is a mastermind strategist. He has been reading ‘The Art of War’ since he was a little kid. The downer? He hasn’t been reading anything else. He reckoned that by adding a ‘Planning’ somewhere in ‘IIM’, he would convince the youth to ‘dare to dream beyond the IIMs’. Alas, somewhere the planning failed, and Pony uncle just ended up planning his downfall. Lately, Pony uncle’s cheerful visage graces full-page ads in national dailies, encouraging the common man to bet on IIPM’s placement statistics for this year. What better way to create a larger-than-life compelling brand, I say? Master stroke, indeed!
Speculation is rife that next year Pony uncle will take on Harvard, Stanford, Yale and other such pitiful foreign business schools in a fight to the end…the end of management education in the world, that is. His eventful chronicles will form part of a movie titled ‘Tum Toh Thehre Pardesi – A Planman Consulting Mega-success Venture’.

This is, by no means, an exhaustive list of upcoming B-Schools with more than a few tricks up their sleeve to dupe young men and women who want to do an MBA in times when MBAs are paid no less than a crore for a year’s work.

Anyway, we shall be returning to the saga in a while – the view from the other side: ten IE windows open at once, each on a different thread at pagalguy.com; the anxious wait for results; the begging and pleading (on your knees, boy) in front of the higher authorities and the Highest Force; the list is endless. To use a clichéd term – watch this space.