This is a the second part of the open letter. The first part may be found here.
I now understood that it was us, the unsuccessful candidates who were to blame! How could a “provider of testing and assessment for more than 350 organizations around the world” ever, ever go wrong? After all, they had “experienced this in prior years as well.” Clearly, we who were resentful and unsuccessful were not “the best performing test takers.”
Therefore, with the deepest regret, I tender an apology to Prometric and the IIMs for having doubted them and their commitment “to ensuring fairness and reliability to best serve honest candidates seeking to accomplish their education and career goals.”
I would however, like to give a few suggestions (some even seriously), if I may, to the concerned authorities, to further refine the selection process:
a) The IIMs should allow the use of any of the 22 languages included in the Eight Schedule of the Constitution of India for the exam/GD/PI/WAT process because people without knowledge of English should also have the opportunity to attend an IIM. The UPSC does it in the IAS exam. Why can’t you? Linguistic diversity is as important as any other diversity. Seriously.
b) The candidate’s scores should be multiplied with the random numbers obtained either from a computer program (random function) or by throwing a dice. This will incorporate the candidate’s luck factor into the aggregate score, and eliminate the unlucky candidates, because our country cannot afford to have unlucky business leaders, who will only slow down our economy.
c) The shortlisting process should also award extra points to people from under-represented geographies, such as islands, places above an altitude of 3000 m & deserts. Because it is important to have a geographically diverse pool of managerial & business talent. Currently, candidates from the plains, the coast and the Deccan are dominating the campuses. Any argument about the relative distribution of population in various regions of India is invalid.
d) Points could potentially also be awarded gratis to high-net-worth entrepreneurs who successfully pulled off mutually beneficial high value business deals that the popular media refers to as “scams” because they have proven their talent as businesspersons. They could be awarded points based on the CAG reported worth of their deals.
Please give due thought to these suggestions. For clarifications, you can contact me at the same address/telephone number/email address which you have so kindly passed on to some other (albeit less reputed) business schools.
(The author apologizes to PG Wodehouse & fans for the odd borrowed phrase)