Vishal Kamal, In love with English Literature, INTJ, Mining Engineer

One of the biggest mistake that can be done by a society is to pretend that the problem does not even exist.

Most of the people answering this question would say that they don’t discriminate people on the basis of category and all that.

I am one of the SC fellow, who could get admission in one of the IIMs through reservation, but I was not able to make up my mind to join these IIMs through reservation. After consultation with some IIM students I decided to not join IIM with such a low CAT percentile and instead decided to sharpen my skills and utilize my time to improve myself. Now the obvious question would be why ?

Because I have seen the condition of most of the SC students inside IIT. Well, most of the category students come to IIT by scoring half of the required marks, but what make me feel pain is that most of the category students are not able to use this opportunity to uplift themselves and even worse they take reservation as their life time requirement.

Now coming to your question, what happens to most of the SC students inside IIM ? I don’t think that it would be very different from IITs.

We all know that there is hardly any PSU that visits any IIM campus, so reservation is not going to help in IIMs. Private firms do not discriminate you on the basis of caste or religion. Of course ! But they do short list people on the basis of their marks in 10th, 12th  and graduation degree.
And here comes the problem, most of the SC guys do not have 90+ marks in their 12th class, and even after getting shortlisted, there goes a GD round.
Now you have to compete with people who have excellent communication and verbal skills. Do you really think that some one with 70 percentile score in verbal section can compete with some one, who had 99+ percentile in that section.

Now let’s say you cracked GD by God’s grace and went to the interview round. Do you think that the Interviewer would not be able to differentiate between a category guy and a normal guy ? Definitely there would be exceptions and a very small portion of SC guys would be the topper of their class, but sadly this is not the reality in most of the cases.

I am not saying that people discriminate category guys, what I am trying to point out is that most of the SC fellows are not prepared enough to utilize all the opportunities available  inside IIM campus.

My advice to any category guy would be –
Of course, no one is going to treat you differently, but you should ask yourself – Are you really ready to join these prestigious institutes considering your not so good skills ?
If you are ready to become a below average student then go on choice is yours.

But if you join these institutes on the basis of reservation and turn out to become very successful, then do remember to give something back to your community. You have the responsibility of changing the life of your people.

Update 1 :

I am not anti-reservation.
I support reservation of the people who really deserve it.
Reservation is a means to benefit people who don’t have enough resources.

Update 2 :
I won’t advise that you should reject your IIM seat just because you are getting it via reservation. For me, it might have been easier decision as I got a decent
job during placement session at IIT(BHU). Of course change is needed, but
you need not to sacrifice yourself completely.
Get a seat inside IIM via reservation( in case you don’t have any other option) , work your ass off. Get package in the range of 20-25 Lacs, use this money to uplift your community, and of course ! Buy a flat, a car, or whatever you desire.
Best of luck

Update 3 :

It was a calculated risk taken by me.
My performance in first year was not that good at IIT(BHU), but I worked really hard in 2nd and 3rd year.
I had to work harder than most of the people around me for same pointers. The reason might have been my primary education from a Hindi Medium school.
In first year, I was not able to understand what Profs were teaching because they were using English. So I had to work really hard on my english, and performed really good in 2nd year. As of now, I am among top 20 Percentile of my class.

I just thought I would not let it happen again in IIM. I am learning new skillsand improving my self.

Being among top 5-10 percentile of an IIM is my dream. If I had joined IIM at this level of preparation, I know , I would not have been able to reach that mark of top 5 percentile of the batch.

So, I thought- Have some patience, make some contacts in industry.
Also, some of my friends are joining IIM this year, I will remain in contact with those people and try to gather information regarding kind of skills required to perform really exceptionally.

I am not afraid of getting low grades or competition  inside IIM, neither do I feel inferior . I am afraid of becoming a mediocre student once again, which my current performance and situation does not allow.

Update 4 :

Some friends are saying that I did not join IIM because I feel inferior.
It’s not the reason why I did this. From August 2014, I am going to join a mining firm as a managament trainee, I’ll prepare for CAT exam while doing my job. This job shall give me sufficient time to improve myself, and also, I would save some money which will be used when I would join IIM. If I want to join IIM via reservation, I can do it anytime I want.  So saying that ‘ rejecting the IIM seat because I am gettig it via reservation is my mistake ‘ is not justified . I am working on myself. I just want to see what my limits are.

Read more here – http://www.quora.com/How-does-it-feel-to-be-an-SC-ST-student-in-IIMs