Manager banne chalein, IIT se

Of the many things that set the (old) IITs apart from the other engineering colleges (and the new IITs), one is the concept of a 'Minor' degree. It goes like this:

On paper, you can choose from a range of minor courses ranging from Physics to Management to Ocean Engineering to Industrial Engineering. This is ofcourse in addition to the Major degree that you get. In practice though, you can only let your luck do the selection for you. They have a system to 'minimize maximum regret'

Nonetheless, of the 500-odd students of my batch, my guess is about 300 (including me) applied for the 180 'seats' in Management stream. A little help from the almighty and a lot more from my department ensured I got the stream I wanted. So over the past one-and-a-half-year, I did course in

• Principles of Management (HR-centric)
• Accounting for Managerial Control (Finance, for you)

The course I am doing this sem is some-fancy-name which stands for Marketing. And yes, the course has not disappointed. Some salient features:

• Attendance at the beginning of the class - 60-odd students. The Prof. reads out the names of each of the students. No attendance for coming late.
  
• 5 marks for attendance. You get Zero if you have more than 5 bunks. I had 11 on the last count.
• 35 marks for a project. Our project was on 'Marketing Strategies in the mobile services sector' - perhaps the best part of the course.
  
• Every now and then, a research scholar would take a class. (Sigh)
  
• Prof. doesn't bother if you sleep in the class - It is difficult to stay awake at 1 PM on a Monday afternoon after an invariable late-nighter on Sunday.