Real talk — before B-school I thought committees and clubs were resume padding. A line item. Something you join in month 1 and forget by month 3.
Then I actually joined one and realized it's basically a crash course in everything the actual MBA is trying to teach you, minus the case studies.
Some things nobody tells you:
👉You learn more about negotiation getting 5 committee members to agree on a WhatsApp status than in an entire negotiations module
👉Deadlines on committees are "real" in a way assignment deadlines aren't — actual candidates, actual events, actual people waiting on you
👉You end up talking to way more seniors, alumni, and faculty than your classmates who skip this stuff — which quietly becomes your network before you even realize it's happening
👉It's the fastest way to understand how the institution actually runs behind the curriculum
At IMI Kolkata specifically, committees aren't a side hustle — they're woven into how the batch operates day to day, so you're not choosing between "academics" and "committee work," you're doing both at once, which honestly mirrors a real job way more than a lecture hall does.
So — worth it?
For me, yes. Not for the certificate. For the fact that it forced me to build actual working relationships instead of just group-chat ones.
Anyone else here on a committee? Curious what everyone's actually getting out of it vs. what they expected going in.