Review of 'Snapshots from hell- The making of an MBA':

Set in the recent past,1988-1990, this book published in 1994 is a very funny, honest and absorbing take on the life of a Stanford MBA student. The author, Peter Robinson, does not spare himself or the college in describing his emotional roller coaster ride of realising his ambition to be a business graduate. With brutal honestness Robinson recounts, in first person narrative, his fears, failures and successes in overcoming the natural Poet (In Stanford lingo, a person who has no significant engineering, mathematical or financial educational background) in him while grappling with the quantitative-heavy Stanford syllabus.

This is a fictionalised autobiography in that the incidents in the story are all true and the protagonist or the observer is the author himself while the names, which could feasibly be changed have been masked. The author admits that 'there was no point in masking popular personalities' and so some of them from his friends' circle or faculty have been retained. Focussing primarily the first year and the summer internship period, Robinson traces his daily life with quotations from his personal journal. The natural flair of rhetoric that the author possesses is quite evident in three places: his pre-Stanford position as a speech writer for President Reagan; Robinson's own journal entries (no doubt written under heavy B-school-pressure) and the wit in storytelling itself.

The book is useful to any b-school student. But, it is especially required to be read by any student who is entering a well-placed or top b-school anywhere, as the philosophy or pedagogy of Stanford (like that of other global top b-schools) is bound to have influenced his or her school's didactics. What make this book timeless are the principles of selection and teaching of Stanford that are only pioneering and not transient, meaning that with time the best practices will only spread globally. The pedagogy and rigor influence a student's life significantly and therefore the experiences are bound to be similar. Today, this is especially true to India because we are witnessiing a globalisation of b-school education here, not suprisingly due to the free-market capitalisation being attempted by India, the growing demand for globally-experienced b-school graduates in Indian mainstream economy and the rise in ambition owing to affordability of quality b-school education. Of course, there are also more than ever Indian students who are able to afford and embrace international business schools.

The reader, especially, if he is in the target audience described earlier will instantly empathise with the author since within the first few pages, the author gives examples of various types of questions and analyses (and answer with diagrams) discussed in the class that added to the latter's misery. The reader thereby gets the benefit of learning about the mindset expected of a b-school student. The author describes with a natural sense of humour, his tribulations in mastering the apparently simple concepts (for the non-Poets) all along doubting his fitment in the Stanford's scheme of things.

During the course of the story, one also gets a glance at the recent history of the school and an understanding of the factors that challenged and led to the evolution of some of the top schools in the US. In the process of understanding the author's student-life, the readers are bound to get satisfactory answers to whether it was all worth it for the author and by extension lead to an introspection of their own motives. Of course, everything is relative and situational and then the book itself is not instructive; but, the subtle impact is lasting.

Wit, honesty and brevity are the key take-aways from Robinson's style.This is an unputdownable book and a must read for all b-school aspirants; an almost 'rite of passage' as I had been told.