1st Term Begins

Academic year starts from tomorrow... Here's wishing everyone in our batch all the very best ! In the meanwhile we are trying to come up with a collaborative GMP blog. I'm sure that there are a good number of bloggers/creative writers in our batch so that there will be no dearth of contributors. Keep watching this space for more info. regarding the collaborative blog.
P.S. We have also elected the 2 CRs of our class this week. A lot of work ahead of them :-)

1st Week @ XLRI

I'm trying to settle down here. We are having a preparatory programme during the 1st week. Prof. Madhukar Shukla took us through the history of Indian Business starting from the post independence era till the late nineties. We were introduced to Case Methodology with the case of "Ross Abermathy and the Frontier National Bank". For anyone interested this case has been taken from Peter Drucher's 'Management Cases'. Since I have an engineering background I was quite skeptical about Accounting & Finance. However, after attending a couple of sessions of Prof. Sabyasachi Sengupta all my demons have vanished. In fact, I have started to believe that I will probably enjoy the subject. The way he introduced the concepts is simply amazing. Kudos to him.. Registration is tomorrow...

Reached XLRI

I reached XLRI on 19th evening. It's been raining here lately. Unfortunately some of us could not be accomodated in the MDP Residence so we are temporarily put up in St.Thomas Men's Residence. Hopefully we would be able to shift to the MDP Residence by month end. In fact a new residential facility is coming up in the campus where all the GMP participants would be housed. This facility is expected to be operational by 1st week of September. So, a lot of packing/shifting ahead of us :-(

Here I come !

The countdown has begun...I shall be leaving for XLRI on 19th June. I'll be travelling with 3 other friends, Shailendra, Suman & Nikhilesh. Santosh was also supposed to travel with us but unfortunately he couldn't make it due to prior professional commitments.
Hopefully the weather at Jamshedpur would be better this time around with the Monsoon setting in. Anyway, that's not my prime concern since from what I heard the Classrooms and the MDP Residence are all centrally airconditioned.
The academic calendar is as follows:
1. Welcome & Preparatory Programme : June 20 - 24, 2007
2. Registration & Briefing for GMP Programme : June 24, 2007 (3 PM)
3. Term 1 Begins - June 25, 2007

XLRI Campus Pics

While browsing through some MBA student blogs I stumbled upon these excellent pics of the XLRI campus. Kudos to the photographer for capturing some really breathtaking snaps. Please see for yourself here !

Educational Loan

I was in Jamshedpur last week to arrange the education loan. I could have paid the entire course fee from my personal funds but decided against the same after some contemplation. My decision to go for the education loan is not based upon financial reasons but to avail the tax advantage associated with the repayment of the loan. Section 80-E of the Income Tax Act contains a provision for availing deduction on the total income on account of educational loans for the purpose of computing taxable income, provided the loan is in the name of the assessee.
For anyone interested the details are as follows:
GMP Course Fee - Rs 6,26,000
Disbursing Bank - State Bank of India
Loan Sanctioned - Rs 5,94,000 (approx 95 %)
Rate of Interest (Floating) - 11.25 % per annum
Repayment - 84 EMI of Rs 10,249
Security/Third Party Guarantee - Waived