11 years ago, Sheryl Sandberg, the CEO of Facebook (or Meta, whichever tickles your fancy) gave a GROUNDBREAKING Ted Talk. Groundbreaking not because it gathered millions of views (which it did), but because the revelations made by her about women in management were brutally CANDID. She spoke at length about the subservient woman paradigm: how generations of girls are raised to be passive in their demeanour, how mildness and submission are culturally ingrained factors affecting an entire gender group. “It is this that makes us doubt ourselves, and think that we’re incapable of sitting on the top.”, she sighed.
In the GMAT milieu/environment, time and again we’ve been rattled by the booming performance of women candidates. But what we’ve witnessed in the past couple of months can only be described as colossal. Three of our students have scored a whopping 770 and above on the GMAT, and the coincidental alignment of these scores one after the other, however elating, is hardly the surprise element. No. These girls are linked by a far more interesting element: their breakout from the “settle-for-less” attitude.
Anushka Chakravorty (GMAT 780) admits she wanted nothing more than a 700 and an IIMA admit. She never imagined before speaking with Sandeep that she was destined for more.
Madhura Banerjee (GMAT 770) would have been perfectly happy with a 740: aiming for a 780 seemed far-fetched. “My verbal was terrible, to begin with! Yet the techniques worked like magic, and took me to an unimaginable V47, a score unheard of!”, Aashna Kapoor (GMAT 770) chuckles.
If we were to point out one thing top B-schools across-the-globe value, it is HUNGER, desire, an itch to go above and beyond. They want it to reflect in your person. They believe these are the people deserving of the view from the top. At TOP, we take expectation setting very seriously. Sandeep has time and again refused to teach candidates who seek an average score and dream of an average program.
DREAMS CAN NOT BE AVERAGE, he says.
People (including us) sometimes doubt if this level of sternness is needed. The very next moment a student testifies how it made them reach the unachievable, and our faith is restored in his methods.
Top B-school programs also push for a 50% representation of women and take affirmative action in this direction. The reason for this is not because women are inherently less capable of scoring high on GMAT, but because the world has made them believe that they possess the less intellectual capacity. Result: most women in management give up due to self-doubt if at all leadership positions open up to them. Imagine: A smooth entry into the world’s best MBA programs will open avenues to senior management and ENVY-INDUCING dream careers.
But one Sheryl Sandberg is not enough. And we can’t leave it to fate. Half of society needs to be elevated to higher self-esteem so that they can go and realize their true potential. We can’t be prouder of our women for breaking their shackles and dreaming BIG. They are testimony to the fact that we are superbly augmenting their painstaking efforts.
Grab your courage, the courage to let go of inhibitions and insecurities, to evolve to your truest potential, and demand what you deserve. When we say we ONLY seek a 99th percentile score and NOTHING LESS, this is what we mean: no matter where you come from, what level of intelligence you currently estimate yourself to be at, you CAN be among the TOP ONE PERCENT IN THE WORLD.
Our meticulously designed course boasts of a self-confidence NOTHING in the market can DARE to, and we continue to witness our temperament seeping into our students.
Absolutely nothing makes us happier!!
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