FINALLY, a thread that I can answer with experience.
I am an IBA Student from a lower middle class background, studying BBA. I have a 3.93 GPA, if that matters.
First of all, your question about doing CA should be shot down at once. I recently interned at Deloitte, and let me tell you the CA situation in Pakistan is grim. 30 year old CA students exhausted from studying and life itself, taking out their frustration on poor interns, working for less than 100K. And these are the ones that made it to the big 4. One of my batchmates is 24 years old, the poor guy left CA in middle and is studying with 4 years younger students.
@sh3hryar and @capsat while your suggestions are good these are not the reflections of reality. From last year IBA has stopped giving merit scholarships and is only giving need based scholarships. If you are a tax filer then forget about any scholarships they will ask your parents to sell their kidneys, the financial aid officers are grim. If you are a non-filer it depends. Most people have blatanty lied and gotten merit scholarships hy feeding bogus information.
If you are a lower class student you will die every day when you see these fancy lads, who didn't study a word in 4 years, using their contacts to get Internships and job placements in big companies. Even though socially I have a good peer group from all backgrounds, our 30 member group is different. Most groups are based around social class and elitist agendas. My friends from intermediate background have shattered confidence in less than a year. A senior infamously told me that IBA ka sirf entrance test merit per hota hai and I stand by it now, if you are rich and powerful you can gain many society positions. Then at these society positions, these people put money in their pockets that was intended for events.
They are still running the NTHP program so keep an eye out for it, but be prepared for discrimination. And one more thing, sirf chaploosi se grade banta hai yahan, mehnat mat karna. Learnt my lesson in first semester and Alhamdullilah chaploosi Bohot achey grades laati hai.
If you can suffer through this, then definitely the society will provide for you. In my two professional experiences, at Unilever and Deloitte, everyone in corporate respects IBAGrads and expects great performance from them. A 50K+ paying job is almost guaranteed, and starting salary packages in Multinationals go till 150K and in management consulting around 300K.
I think Biggest lessons IBA teaches is:
1. Don't expect life to be fair.
2. Chaploosi is the way to success
3. In Pakistan you can buy merit and justice with money.
4. Loot everyone and fill your pockets.
5. Contacts are everything.
I predicted to my father before coming mein yahan kamyab Tou ho jaoga lekin ganda ho jaoga because I had already interned at IBA before joining and seen everything.