IIM-A once again: Sunday ET B-School survey

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They are factories producing business leaders of the future. And are going to play a big role in making India, the talent capital of the world. B-schools have always been a hot subject for business publications in the country, but it’s their perceptual value that makes them ‘hot’ amongst the hiring fraternity.

As 2007 draws to a close, Sunday ET commissioned global research major Synovate to identify some of the big B-schools to watch out for in 2008, on the perceptual benchmarks laid down by India Inc. The survey of the top CEO and HR heads had a story to tell. While some IIMs, ISB and the likes of FMS were bunched together as the top choices by the industry, it was interesting to note second rungs making a prominent mark amongst the top 20 B-schools.

And threaten the popularity of some B-schools that have traditionally ruled the chart. Savour this. Symbiosis, Pune and IMI Delhi outscored the likes of XLRI and IIM Lucknow and others like K J Somaiya and S P Jain Institute finding a stronger favour over IIM Kozikode and MDI Gurgaon. This clearly points to the fact that second line of management education is readying itself and will keep big brothers on their toes. However, Big Bs still rule. The IIM-A bags the top slot followed by IIM-B among the top B-schools in the country. And which management institute has the best faculty and is constantly up-grading? It’s IIM-A once again!

XAT aspirants nearing 100,000

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In a couple of days, around 90,000 management aspirants, will be taking the Xaviers Admission Test (XAT).

This is a 20 per cent increase in the number of candidates taking XAT from last year, when the figure stood at 75,000.

The number of colleges accepting XAT scores has also doubled from 23 in 2004 to 46 this year.

“The Indian industry today has a capacity to absorb management graduates like never before. Moreover, even the top B-schools have increased their batch sizes to meet the growing demand,” KK Raman, executive director, KPMG said.

“A recent trend has emerged where good B-schools are accepting Common Admission Test as well as XAT scores. So deserving candidates who could not perform well in CAT for any reason, see XAT as an opportunity to get into a good business school (B-school,” he adds.

TAPMI sets record in placements of graduates

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AVERAGE SALARY OFFERED IS Rs 7.38 lakhs

Manipal: Almost all the students of T A Pai Management Institute (TAPMI), Manipal, were ‘placed’ within a few hours of commencement of the process of the Campus Placement for the batch of 2008, held on Thursday.

According to a press release, the TAPMI adopted a dual offer system with an end of the day acceptance in order to allow students to have their choice of signing up for the most preferred organisations.

While 74 companies confirmed their willingness to recruit, 61 companies participated on the campus placement process on Day One, that is, December 20.

They together made a total of 184 offers (including 3 Overseas) to 125 students.
Students exercised their choice and accepted offers in 50 companies representing diverse sectors such as Financial Services including Banking, Equity Research and Wealth Management, IT & ITES, Consulting, Telecommunication, FMCG, Manufacturing, Health Care, Entertainment and Infrastructure.

Total of 12 students had received pre-placement offers for their outstanding performance during their summer internship of which three accepted. The average salary offered this year is Rs 7.38 lakhs (which is to go up with revised salary structure from a few companies) and the highest salary offered is Rs 18 lakhs (Rs 9.25 in Placement 2007), the release added. Companies that visited TAPMI campus and recruited for the first time included Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, KPMG, SEBI, ICRA, Adventity, Bank of America, Standard Chartered Bank, CapGemini, D E Shaw, Big FM, GMR Group, Godrej & Boyce, JSW, Tata Capital, Reliance Capital, Pioneer Investment Corporation and Wockhardt Hospitals.

IIMs, XLRI, MDI, dominate Business World Top B-schools Survey rankings

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There are no real surprises in the recently published ‘India’s Top B-schools’ survey, conducted by a leading business magazine Business World (BW).

The BW survey, published in issue dated December 24 - 2007, puts Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad at the top of the league tables. Apart from IIM-A, there are three other IIMs that make it to the Top 10 table.

Widely regarded as leading private B-schools, Xavier’s Labour Relations Institute (XLRI), Management Development Institute (MDI), Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) Delhi, Mumbai based SP Jain Institute of Management & Research all make it to the Top 10 table. National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai is perhaps the only real surprise in the Top 10 list. IIM Bangalore did not offer complete details and was hence not ranked, says the survey.
Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai and Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad are some other B-schools that have done well on the survey.

Amongst the B-schools that have moved up rapidly on the survey rankings, when compared to last survey in 2005, include Bangalore based Alliance Business Academy and Chennai based Loyola Institute of Business Management. Alliance Business Academy is ranked at # 15 and Loyola Institute is ranked at # 20.

Business World Survey 2007: Top B-schools league table
# 1 Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
# 2 Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata
# 3 Xavier Labour Relations Institute, Jamshedpur
# 4 Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode
# 5 Management Development Institute, Gurgaon
# 6 Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi
# 7 Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow
# 8 National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai
# 9 SP Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai
# 10 Indian Institute of Management, Indore
# 11 Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi
# 12 Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai
# 13 Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad
# 14 Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubneshwar
# 15 Alliance Business Academy, Bangalore

Source: Business World, Dec 24, 2008

The Business World survey was done is conjunction with research agency Gfk- Mode. The survey contacted 202 B-schools of which ninety six B-schools participated by answering the questionnaire. Notably, the survey back checked all data with a ‘facility audit’. Says Business World survey, “BW has followed the facility audit methodology. All these B-schools were visited and 2000 students were interviewed to verify the information.” Taking about parameters used in the survey, BW says, “The scoring was done on five parameters, each with different weights.” The survey also included feedback from recruiters.

Parameters and their weightages for BW are: Living Experience (campus infrastructure) 150; Learning experience (qualification and experience of faculty) 300; Placement experience (placement performance and salaries) 250; Return on Investment (salaries received in comparison to the cost of the programme) 200; International exposure (tie-ups with foreign campuses and exchange programme) 100. Weightages were allocated from a total of 1000.
According to BW, some of B-schools that did not participate in the survey include Jamnalal Bajaj School of Management, Institute of Rural Management Anand and Department of Management Studies, IIT Delhi.

This survey completes that 2007 B-school survey reports. As reported on this management portal earlier, several media rankings have been released in past few months. Prominent media rankings include Outlook, Business India and Business Today.

Institutes analyze JMET 2008 for IIT B-schools

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After the analysis of Common Admission Test (CAT) 2007 and Indian Institute of Foreign Trade Entrance Exam (IIFT) 2007, MBAUniverse.com Aspirant Zone looks at analysis of Joint Management Entrance Test (JMET) 2008.

JMET 2008, the entrance exam for six IIT B-schools and IISc Bangalore’s Department of Management Studies was held on December 9, 2007. Lets know what Mumbai based IMS Learning, Hyderabad based Triumphant Institute of Management Education (TIME) and Pune based Career Forum have to say about the paper and their expected cut-offs.
The JMET 2008 paper was scheduled for 120 minutes and had a total of 150 questions. The paper was divided in 4 sections include Verbal Communication (VC); Logical Reasoning (LR); Quantitative Ability (QA) and Data Interpretation (DI).

According to experts, JMET 2008 was more difficult than last year. According to IMS Learning, “JMET is gradually increasing the calculation and reasoning element in Data Interpretation questions and making experiments with the Quantitative ability questions. The Logical Reasoning-Verbal Reasoning balance has changed drastically from last year. The focus on Reading Comprehension has gone down slightly, and that on Verbal Ability, especially grammar-based questions, has gone up a bit. Because the test was a bit more difficult than last year’s, overall cut-offs are expected to be lower”.

Section-wise analysis of JMET 2008:
Verbal Communication
According to TIME analysis, “the Verbal Communication section had questions (40) from Reading Comprehension, Grammar, Vocabulary, Analogies and Fill in the blanks. The section had a good mix of both easy and difficult questions. The RC passages were short and readable (as opposed to CAT) but like CAT, had two very close options in most cases, which made them a nightmare to negotiate. The vocabulary questions were not commonly used words which made them very difficult to answer. The Fill in the blanks and the questions based on semantics were doable and would have given opportunities to score”.

Logical Reasoning
The section had total 23 questions based on verbal reasoning (17) and on logical reasoning (16). According to IMS Learning, “In logical reasoning, the sets were time consuming. One should have given more preference to single questions while solving. In verbal reasoning, there were the usual constructs like critical reasoning and jumbled paragraphs. Several questions were similar to logical reasoning in that they required a passing knowledge of mathematical concepts”.
Quantitative Ability
There were total 40 questions in this section. The Career Forum analysis shows that “The difficulty level of this section is the same as that of last year. In Higher Maths, the questions were from Linear Programming and there were a couple of questions on matrices. All questions were in the form of caselets drawn from real life situations and were given specific titles. These could be solved using graphs and functions”.

Data Interpretation
According to TIME, “This section was very unlike the easy DI section of previous years JMET. Being different from what one was used to, the sets demanded intensive calculations which made this section moderately difficult”.

The expected overall cut-offs of IIT B-schools and all institutes IISC are:
Institute: TIME
IIT-Bombay: 50+
IIT-Delhi: 45+
IIT-Kharagpur: 40+
IIT-Kanpur: 40+
IIT-Chennai: 40+
IIT-Roorkee: 36+
IISC: 45+

Institute: Career Forum
IIT-Bombay: 61-63
IIT-Delhi: 56-61
IIT-Kharagpur: 53-54
IIT-Kanpur: 51-53
IIT-Chennai: 48-51
IIT-Roorkee: 46+
IISC: 54-56

IMS Learning is expecting overall cut-off of 50-55.

Just one girl in 10 students making it to IIMs: Survey

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New Delhi (PTI): Women MBA aspirants account for only 10 per cent of students joining the Indian Institutes of Management, as lower participation, coupled with relatively less business aptitude has limited their strength at these elite B-schools, a study says.

According to a study conducted by management education training institute Career Launcher, only one in three taking Common Admission Test, the gateway to IIMs, are women in Delhi, while the ratio for rest of India is even lower.

The female participation in CAT exams is itself lower, that added with their failure in group discussions lead to women filling in only 10 per cent of the total number of seats in the IIMs, Career Launcher’s Academics Director Arindam Lahiri said.

While most of them clear their written examinations, a less aptitude for business and management lead to their failure in group discussions, the study found.

The admission to IIMs are based on the scores in written CAT examinations, as well as group discussions and personal interviews.

“Girls are more emotionally inclined in answering questions compared to boys,” found the survey that involved around 12,500 students across 40 cities in the country.

“Girls tend to fare better in the English usage section as they are generally better read and tend to attempt more questions on Arithmetic in the Maths section, whereas boys tend to be a bit more mathematically sound overall and do well in the Algebra and Geometry sections of the paper as well,” Career Launcher faculty member Arjun Wadhwa said.

Number of CAT examinees jumped from 1,90,000 last year to 2,30,000 this year, with aspirants competing for about 5,000 seats available, the survey said.