PGDBA at IIM Calcutta: Pre Semester.

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After a week of orientation sessions, our classes started for pre-semester from 29th June 2015. It was a 3 weeks crasher on basic management subjects. We got the new books and PGDBA bags :-).

We had 4 papers in pre semester, Marketing management, Financial management, organizational behavior and Contemporary Business Analytics. Many students wonder, what is the major difference between a normal local college and IIM/IITs, that is ; kind of teachers you get. Profs at IIM calcutta are gods of their subjects. And when you see their credentials and achievements, you feel proud and amazed. When you read Wikipedia pages on your professors, it automatically generates respect. We were lucky to have very senior profs for 3 of our courses in pre-sem. OB was taught by Dr Leena chatterji and Dr Rajeev kumar, Financial management was taught by Dr Ashok Banerjee, CBA was taught by Dr Indranil bose( our course coordinator). All of them were senior and best profs in these subjects.

The aura Dr Banerjee has around him is amazing. And the way he teaches, is just fab. Suddenly i was enjoying finance classes like anything. his classes were very planned, interactive and fun filled. It was evident, how a good teacher can make your interest in the subject. Our class room for finance classes was financial research and training lab in New academic block at ground floor. The lab is prof Banerjee's kingdom. The lab had desktop, mike at each seat and state of the art audio visual aids, to make learning an amazing experience. The classes were 1.5 hours each and we used 2 have 4 classes a day. Very soon we started getting assignments.

Dr Leena chatterjee was one of the best professors of IIM calcutta. she has received best profs awards and when in her class, we know how experienced she was. She was damn good in the subject. Her classes were interactive and fun filled. Never felt bored for a minute in her class. She taught half of course and another half was taken by Dr rajeev kumar. Dr rajeev kumar also headed the placement department at IIM Calcutta. Both of them took real life examples and case studies to explain contents. We had to come prepared by reading the case studies and case studies were discussed and concept behind those case studies were extracted. Classes were very interactive.

Dr Indranil Bose is one of best professor of MIS department at IIM Calcutta. As he was coordinating our course from IIM calcutta and he was also chair person of coordinators committee , he was like guardian of this course. He took classes punctually and classes were totally interactive.
And again case studies were method of learning. After every class he used to discuss developments about the course and speaking to him was always a confidence booster for our batch. He took care of every aspect of this course.

Profs Ramedra singh and Prof. Ritu mehta taught us marketing management. Prof. Ramendra singh was very funny in his examples. Classes were interactive and fun. We had to come prepared with case studies.

Excellent , experienced and world class faculty was highlight the pre-sem.

One thing i should mention, once you come to an IIM, first thing you must learn is to become punctual. 10 am means 09:59:59. Not 10:01 or 10:05. Some students learnt this hard way when Leena mam threw some people out for coming late, and from next class every body was on time :-). And assignments had to be submitted dot on time. If your assignments reaches 2 minutes late, consider it getting rejected. All profs were strict with respect to arriving to class on time. Coming late means you lack seriousness about what you are doing. I welcomed this strictness from professors. I also would like to tell you about my batch mates.  Talent in my batch is amazing. We have big achievers in my class. Graduates from IITs, GATE rank 2, GRE 337/340, IES qualifiers, are some of the stats which can tell you, this was a bunch of very smart fellows. I am impressed by the mixture of talent we have in my batch. Not only in studies, we have KHATARNAAK coder :-) ,good singers, guitar players, chess player, good foot ball player as well.

Another thing we loved about IIM C culture is, no formals for classes. IIM C is very cool campus in this regard, you could see people going to class in shorts and floaters.

Rigorous schedule started very soon and we all were up till 3-4 AM every day. One of the worst part of life at IIMs is lack of sleep. But that happens at all IIMs. You have so much to do. We were over loaded with assignments, readings etc. Learning graph sharply went upwards. But other than studies we also found time for some good singing mehfils, taking stroll in campus after dinner. My class mates also participated in a sports event. We were extremely loaded still we enjoyed it, and even study was fun. When ever i din't understand any thing, my batch mates helped. In between American express did an Analytics  workshop for our batch at IIM C campus. My classmates won ipads and samsung tabs. Amex also sponsored lunch for all of us from Subway at campus :-). They are very helpful and very interested in taking part in shaping and helping this course.

After rigorous 15 days classes we wrote exams for pre-semester. Finance exam was extremely tough.
Other papers were manageable. Got weekend off before we could move to ISI campus for first semester. This two days was a big relief after super hectic 15 days. :-).What an amazing 15 days these were! In terms of learning it was one of best 15 days in my life.