A Shaolin monk needs to go through a life time of training before they call him a master. And judging by what most people have seen of how they punish their bodies, that must be a task worthy of someone who could succeed at just about anything in life. In our society, to be a “master” of something basically just means going to a few more years of schooling; it’s a rather casual process, once you actually get into it. Of course, getting into such an elite program can be a serious challenge for anybody with the guts to even try for it. Not so many people get in.
This is probably why they have so many GMAT prep courses out there—and even GMAT class online. While taking the admissions test for a grad school may not be as hard as becoming a Shaolin monk (some of those exercises just look downright painful- and they work out all day long), it isn’t exactly a walk in the park either. It makes sense, of course – who would want to go to a program that anybody could just waltz in and take? There has to be some kind of a filtering process in place, or pretty soon everybody in the world would have a master’s degree hanging on their wall.
Maybe getting into such a program is meant to test the fabric of the people who want to succeed in business. While getting a master’s degree is far from vital to be a successful business person, it sure couldn’t hurt to have that kind of extra training and confidence under your belt. Who knows, that might even be one of the reasons why they even call it a master’s degree in the first place- because you would have had to master a certain number of challenges to get it in the first place. It certainly means something.
