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Am sitting at the CC (Cyber Cafe) right now as seniors have taken our LAN cords for the time being. The net connection will be provided in our rooms in 4-5 days. But this is the best place to sit to escape from the heat. It has been terribly hot here and I have rarely seen this much heat in past few years of my life. Waiting eagerly for the rains now.

We all (students + parents) assembled in the auditorium at 5:00 PM for the welcome address by none other than the man himself, the director of IIM-A, the man whom I have seen millions of times on TV, the man revered all over the education and industry world... Prof. Bakul Dholakia.

It's a huge auditorium and when he stepped on to the dias bearing the IIM-A logo, the sight looked so awesome, so overwhelming, filling you with pride and fear at the same time. In the next few days, we will be meeting professors who are gems in their own field, who appear on news channels, who write in Econominc Times and business magazines... we had only heard about them, to meet them personally and interact with them on a daily basis is a nerve wrecking prospect indeed.

Anyways, the welcome speech started by making us realize how fortunate and deserving we have been in sitting there today at the best management institution in the continent. After briefing us with the history of this institute, he went on to give us some facts about the standing of IIM-A vis-a-vis other institutes across the country and the world.

Just to give a brief update - IIM-A was started in 1961, the first management institute in the country along with IIM-C. It has been rated as the "toughest B-school in the world to gain admission into" by the Economist, beating places like Harvard and Stanford. In the past 5 years, more than 15 rating agencies have conducted surveys and all have continuosuly rated it as the Best B-school in India without any exception in every ranking. This place is very strict about academics and you just can't afford to slip up at all. Anyways, we were all expecting this...

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* Contributed by -
Vinamra Srivastava (Campus Associate),
PGP - 1,
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.