To everyone writing CAT this year and thinking about FMS Delhi. Please read this before you accept the seat.

I have taken AI's help to write this, not because I can't write it myself but because I have to go back to that building tomorrow morning and I can't risk anyone recognising my writing. Everything here has actually happened. Few small details changed to protect people. Nothing added for effect.

If you think, this happens in all B-Schools, then you are wrong. It is much worse here. Initially, even it was my own excuse for the first few weeks, so I understand it completely. You hear the stories about MDI and the IIMs and you assume the culture is same everywhere and your job is just to somehow get through it.

Then I asked around properly. My batchmates have friends across the other IIMs and the other top B-schools, and I asked them what their friends talk about their colleges.

Nothing like this happens anywhere. Other top B-schools are not slightly better. A thousand times better (don't include MDI in it). Their seniors help them. Their committees prepare them instead of destroying them first. Nobody is sitting in a hall for twelve hours being told they are worthless.

Yes, placement pressure is there. But pressure is not abuse. That difference is the whole reason I am writing this.

For all those people who don't have time to read complete details. Please Read the short version at least and people who are actually considering joining FMS in near future please read the full version.

SECTION 1: THE SHORT VERSION

I'm writing this for everyone who is going to write CAT this year, and the years after that.

The ones who will clear it, get the FMS call, and then sit with the placement report open in one tab and the fee structure in another, trying to figure out if this is the place they want to give their next 2 years in. Nobody writes down what actually goes on inside this college. There is no way for you to find out before you give two years of your life to it.

That is the only reason I'm doing this. I should be sleeping right now but I'm not. Please read this, and make a informed decision.

Six weeks in, this is where we are

Even before our classes started, they put us through fifteen days of induction. Twelve hours daily, from 9 in the morning till 9 at night, more than 200 of us are stuffed into one hall and were made to sit straight up on tent chairs with no space to even stretch our legs, and seniors coming in shifts to shout at us.

One night they kept us there till the next morning. No sleep at all.

And on top of all this the Placement Committee would drop tasks at night with a three hour deadline, six maximum. So you reach home already finished and then you have to work. Four hours of sleep was the good night.

Then classes started on 1 July and it became worse, not better.

Now our day is like this. Classes from 9 to 4. Then the Placement Committee comes in and shouts at us for one hour while we sit with our backs straight, not even allowed to look at them. Then a Guest lecture (GL) by a company executive. Then thirty more minutes of shouting. And if there's a second GL, another thirty minutes after that also. Some nights we are getting out at 9.

I'm not describing one bad day. This is every day. Six weeks of every day, and honestly I don't know how much more of it I can take.

This is how they talk to us

You're stupid. You'll never get placed. You don't have anything. Idiots. Absolute f**ers.*

Read that once more and understand that this is not one person losing his temper. This is just the language. This is what they actually think we are.

One and a half months and not one person in my batch has been spoken to like a normal human being. Not one person has been appreciated for anything. Not even once. I've lost count of how many people I have seen crying in these six weeks. That is the most honest line in this whole post.

SECTION 2: WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS, IN DETAIL

Part 1: It starts even before your first class

200 of us in one room, twelve hours a day

Classes started on 1 July. The two weeks before that were induction, and that's where all of this got set.

From 9 in the morning to 9 at night. They kept us in one hall for all twelve hours, sitting straight up on tent chairs, because sitting in any other way was simply not allowed.

If you've been to FMS you know how small the rooms are. This was not an auditorium. It was a mid sized hall where classes normally happen, and they had 200 plus of us inside it. Forget comfort, there was no space to even extend your legs. You sat with your legs folded exactly where they were and you didn't move. Too much suffocation as well.

Twelve hours. Fifteen days. Just think what that does to a body.

With that, one group of seniors will comes in and shouts, either they pick one person or they shout at all of us together. Then they leave and the next group comes in and it starts again from zero. Then the next. Then the next one after that.

Hour after hour after hour. You never knew when it would stop, because it didn't stop.

There was one night they made us sit there till the next morning. Not one minute of sleep for anybody.

Then they sent us home, and some of us were travelling back in that condition, barely able to keep our eyes open.

And this is the part that gets to me now. We thought it was normal. Everybody around us was going through the same thing and nobody was saying anything, so we assumed this is how it is supposed to be.

And after all that, the tasks

The Placement Committee would send something at night. Three hour deadline. Six at the maximum.

Just think about it properly for one second. You have already done twelve hours in that hall. You are completely finished. You somehow reach home. And now you have to sit and work.

Four hours of sleep if the night went well, and most nights it didn't go well. And you still had to reach on time in the morning, because being even a few minutes late means they will shout at you for that also.

Fifteen days of this. Continuously. Can you believe that? Fifteen days back to back, no break, every single day with abuse.

That is harassment. That is ragging. Call it what it is. And this is what a whole batch went through before attending even one class.

At the end they gave us a fresher's party and assumed that everything that they did to us was justified. I don't even know what to even say to these people

Part 2: Then term started and it only got worse

What a normal day looks like now

Classes from 9 to 4. By the time they finish, for most days you usually haven't eaten anything properly, because there is no good gap anywhere, and you were anyway running on four hours of sleep.

You are not tired from last night. You are tired from six weeks.

Then at 4 there is a GL scheduled from some company, so we go and sit in the hall. And before it starts the Placement Committee walks in, and from the second they enter the room they start shouting.

One full hour, and you can't even look away

Backs should be completely straight like we are in some kind of military camp. No eye contact with them, that's an actual rule and they enforce it. You can't even turn your head.

So you look straight ahead and keep looking straight ahead for one hour while they make us feel like shit.

Just holding that position after seven hours of class, with no sleep and no food, is difficult enough. Then, you have to bear there sweet words also like: You're stupid. You'll never get placed. You don't have anything. You can't even get placed. You don't have anything. Idiots. Absolute f**ers. Daily. On loop.

The GLs are good usually good. The company people who come are always decent with us. Nobody in my batch has any issue attending them.

The problem is the one hour before and the thirty minutes after. That's it. That was always it.

Miss one point and they'll make you stand up

We're supposed to research the speaker completely before he comes. His career, his company, his background, everything.

Miss even one point and they will make you regret that by unnecessarily shouting on you, and giving violations and for the context if you are above 10 violations, you are signed out from the placement process. Your whole career, years of hard work for CAT gone.

Thirty more minutes after the first one. If there's a second GL, thirty more of abuse after that also, which some nights means getting out at 9.

And there is always some reason. Somebody was slouching while the executive was talking. The questions from the batch were not good enough. How we sat. How we looked. How we reacted.

Even when you are clearly right. Especially when you are clearly right, and try to explain your point to them, guess what they'll do, yes you are right, they'll shout again

Who told you to speak? You don't have the right to speak to us.

There is always something, and that's how we realised that the reason was never actually the reason. They have to just show who is the boss here. It is all about the powertrip, nothing else.

Part 3: What six weeks of this does to people

I can't count the crying anymore

I'm not saying this for effect. I genuinely cannot count.

People come out of the one on one sessions crying, again and again, and it happens so often that we have stopped even reacting to it. That is what I want you to think about. It became normal.

Somebody in my batch has had a panic attack because of this. Somebody felt dizzy in the middle of a session.

And somebody has seriously thought about leaving FMS. Giving up a seat that lakhs of people would do anything for. After seeing all this, I don't blame him even a little.

The confidence part, which is what actually keeps me awake

A lot of us here are not from the big undergrad colleges. We came here with a lot of doubt about ourselves while sitting next to people with tier 1 colleges and quietly wondering if we even deserve to be in that room. That feeling was there from day one, before anybody said a single word to us.

Then six weeks of being told daily that you are worthless. That you are the stupidest people in the country. That no company will ever take you.

People think this stays outside you. That you'll hear it and let it go because obviously it's unfair. It doesn't work like that. It goes in. And then one day you realise you are saying the same things to yourself in your own voice.

And this is the part that makes me genuinely angry. What are they preparing us for? Interviews. Interviews are the one place where confidence is everything, where a stranger looks at you for twenty minutes and decides whether you believe in yourself or not.

Six weeks of getting broken down every evening does not make that person. They are making us worse at the exact thing they exist for, and I don't think even one of them has thought about this for a second.

Part 4: Everything they say to justify it

"This is how it has always been"

That's the entire justification. It toughens you up. It maintains the legacy. And they say it with so much confidence that after some time you catch yourself half believing it also.

"It's only a few individuals"

No. If it was one senior having a bad week or one guy with anger issues, it wouldn't have hit an entire batch the same way for six weeks straight.

It's the committee culture itself.

Part 5: There is one person who does it properly

I'm not going to pretend all of them are the same, because that would be unfair, and he deserves better than that.

There is one member of the committee who does this job the right way. He gives feedback that is actual feedback, the kind you can take and use. He doesn't need to humiliate anybody to make his point. He talks to us like we are going to be his colleagues next year, which we are.

Everybody in my batch knows exactly who I'm talking about. Everybody respects him. Respects, not fears. He is also the proof, and that's the main reason I'm mentioning him at all. Same role. Same responsibility. Same pressure of getting a batch placed. And he manages it without one single thing that I have written above.

So all the rest of it is a choice. Every bit of it. They are choosing to do this.

If you are reading this, and I think you'll know it's you, then thank you from the bottom of my heart. The whole batch wishes you success. Genuinely.

Part 6: And placement week hasn't even started

20 to 27 September. Everything above is only the run-up. One and a half months gone and there is still more coming.

I'm not writing this to finish anybody's career. The formal complaint is already with the administration and that will go wherever it goes. It's out of my hands.

I'm writing this for the person who will write CAT this year, clear it, get the FMS call, and sit there deciding with the placement report open.

If that's you, please don't read only the placement report. Ask a current student what an ordinary day looks like here. Hour by hour. Not the average package. Not the highest package. Just a average day.

Getting in here felt like the best thing that ever happened to me. Some part of me still can't let go of that, and honestly that is the worst part of this whole thing.

I only wish somebody had told me beforehand what it was going to cost.

This is not all, there are just so many things that I can't recall, and don't want to write because the post is already quite long.