How to get into XLRI? | Athul’s journey to XLRI Jamshedpur

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I like to think of the lives each of us leading as long threads of a string. In the rhythm of life, on the waves of time, we tangle and untangle - some never meeting, some interweaving so strong as to become one, and all else in between. The stranger you met on the train is a brief intersection of two disparate threads, the book you read is the invisible thread of the author interacting with your own, your batch mates at a B-School are a couple of hundred threads interweaving for the period of the program. While we do have some power over the direction of our thread and which other threads we interact with, in most cases it is dictated by the cumulative effect of choices of others. And our choices and decisions are influenced by this push and pull of various threads which are interwoven with our own.

In the same way, we might not be entirely cognisant of the forces that mold us into who we are, I am not entirely sure where my desire to become a Manager was first implanted. But I do remember, at a young age, when asked about what my ambition in life was, I replied that it was to be a manager. I did my schooling from Loyola School Trivandrum, a Jesuit run institute. In my 8th grade, during a casual conversation with our Vice Principal there, a Jesuit priest, I told about how Jesuits run some of the best academic institutions in the country, including "the oldest and best private B-School in India" - XLRI. And that's when I first came to know about B-Schools in India, even before the IIMs, the first B-school I came to know of was XLRI. Along with that came the desire to become part of that legacy, to look up to my journey to XLRI Jamshedpur. But the pushing and pulling of the threads sent me in a widely different direction - after my tenth, I took up biology, and then went on to do engineering in Applied Electronics and Instrumentation.

Fuel your interests

It was during my engineering days that the Tony Stark bug bit me - the burning desire to build something extraordinary and then become a genius billionaire-playboy-philanthropist. I immersed myself in all tech things and was fascinated by it, building up various skills to take on the world's problems with technology. Innovation was my religion. And although along the way, I had a couple of good ideas, I found out that I could not effectively convert it to a business model. Something felt missing. 

I tried my hands on a small venture but eventually it had to close due to lack of revenue. It was against this background in the fag end of the third year in my engineering that my passion for management again fired up. It happened as I read our late president Dr A.P.J Abdul Kalam's biography, Wings of Fire. After reading the book, and rereading it, I understood that the true nature of innovation lay in management and that while technological breakthroughs were important unless one knew how to effectively run a team or make a product useful and give value to the consumer, it wouldn't be enough. It was a revelation to me and inspired me so much such that I decided to skip the final placement process at my undergrad altogether and instead focussed on cracking the holy grail of management aspirants in India – CAT. En route, I also registered for its sister exam XAT.

Journey to XLRI Jamshedpur

I prepped and got decent percentiles in both the exams. However, the CAT score was not high enough to get a call from the big three institutes of A, B, C. And that's when XLRI reentered my life, and its USP of the XL culture was brought to my attention. Repeatedly, in online and offline forums, people extolled XLRI's extensive alumni base and its strong three batch culture. Further, XLRI, as a Jesuit run institute, held the same values as had been inculcated in me at Loyola – that of Magis, to ever strive to be better and keep improving myself, and that of the principle to work for the greater good and glory of humanity. A WAT-GD-PI and a few months later, the results came, my journey to XLRI Jamshedpur was a success. And that is how I am where I am.

Now all, these decisions were not mine alone; there were several people who influenced these in one way or the other. There were various situations, social pressure, my own ambitions and perception of a good life at play. None of these decisions were easy nor were they impulsive. All the push and pull factors had to be considered and weighed on a proper scale to decide upon my life choices. In retrospect, many of them might not have been optimal, and maybe I could have made choices that would have made more wholesome sense. But looking at the big picture, these were my decisions and mine alone, and there is only that one way which I could ever have lived this life, and thus, all roads would lead me to this one same Rome - XLRI Jamshedpur!

This article was submitted as an entry to Become an Author 2.0 with Dare2Compete.