Electing the Electives

Almost 90% of the people choose electives not based on the learning value of a course but based on how their CQPI gets affected by the choice of a particular course. Of course, there are those really focused people in all streams – Finance, Marketing etc. but the point is even those who are really interested, say in finance, are not taking a particular course as a 'credit' course but as 'audit' course as the former may harm their CQs. A unanimous feedback from the seniors has been that people will not extract the full learning value out of a course if they take it as 'audit' as the natural complacency is bound to set in considering the work load from other courses and various other activities under the 'XL culture' banner. The audit applicants also stand to lose out the opportunity to attend the course at all if the faculty thinks that there are too many auditors than creditors. Many are ready to take such risks just for grades. I have been present closest to the placement process and what I make out is that grades do not matter greatly – in fact for placements nothing other than good communication skill really matters in most companies. Except for consults which look for the top 20% of the students, most others short list people arbitrarily or using some superhuman radio-technological parameters. What matters while in the corporate world is the stuff inside the skull and not the number on a sheet of paper – this does not mean I degrade grades, but there is something more important than that – knowledge.