Hello everyone,

Many of you have been asking me to provide some feedback and my strategy for the management optional. Management appears to be a mysterious optional for even many top MBAs. The reason being, relatively low marks, less people in top 100 (I am the first person in the last 3-4 years to crack a top 100 rank from management optional), and lack of guidance.

I will try to break some myths regarding this subject through my posts. The first one is that it is a low scoring optional. This is not entirely true (I have explained this in my video, link below). To reiterate, management is one of the few optionals where a stable, above average (rank making) and predictable performance can be achieved. It is not an optional like Pub Ad or Socio where one year is amazing and the other seeing huge butchering. If you put in the requisite hours, you will get 270-290 for sure. If you get lucky you might even get 310+. On a normal, average year, you will score in the 260-275 range for sure.

I have scored the highest this year (281), second highest last year (251) and highest or second highest in 2014 (243). My consistent performance in management has been due to my simple and balanced approach towards this really good optional. Please watch my video for how I went and prepared about it. I will also post more detailing my notes, my future plans regarding management guidance, my GS strategy (I have also have one of the highest scores in GS this year — 449) and Essay (158).

Management Optional Video