How to select your B-School: Part I

In this three-part series, Vivek Sankaran of TopMyTest will share how to select the right B-school to study MBA. Here is the first article of this series.

By Vivek Sankaran

The admission process to study Masters in Business Administration (MBA) in colleges in the USA, the UK, etc, can be easily be grabbed based on the candidate’s score in written tests such as the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) or the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT). Based on their score, the candidate could apply to selective colleges.

However, in case of a majority of the top MBA colleges in India, an aspirant needs to pay an extra cost for application forms for each individual institute based on the score they are expecting to achieve in the domestic entrance exams. Each of these application forms cost an average of Rs 2,000. This creates confusion and uncertainty in the minds of the aspirants that further impacts their decision making.

There are more than 1,500 B-schools in India offering postgraduate degrees (or diplomas) in management education. However, most of the students aspire to get into the top 100 odd B-schools in the country, unfortunately, a lot of students end up getting no interview calls for the second phase of the selection process. This is not only because of marks that they scored in the written test but also because they missed the application deadline altogether. This is a deadly combination of ignorance, apathy, diffidence and arrogance.

To overcome this situation, I want the candidates to consider certain things that would ensure that they get about four to five interview calls to the B-schools in February 2020 after the CAT 2019 results are out. You should have an option of choosing from these colleges, rather than being forced to take up what is being offered to you or worse still not get into an MBA college altogether. And, these colleges should be commensurate with your academic and work experience profile, your eventual performance in the written examination and most importantly, provide you a platform to achieve your career goals.

In this first part of the series, I will be listing out the factors that are given too much importance, especially at the application stage. From my experience, in the medium to long term, these factors do not matter as much as candidates think they do.

Placements and return on investment: Management evokes images of a jet setting corporate professional, living the life. We are bombarded with news about alumni of top MBA colleges hobnobbing with the rich and the famous, cutting mega deals and leading a plush, comfortable life. Come placement season, newspapers are full of articles about how an MBA graduate fresh out a top college landing a huge salary package. A related “measure” is the Return on Investment (RoI). To most, this is simply the average placement package offered divided by the course fees for the MBA Program. Given that most top colleges (with a few exceptions like FMS - Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi, and JBIMS - Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies) will cost you around two million rupees (Rs twenty lakhs) for a full-time MBA program, a lot of students (wrongly) make a decision on the sole basis of placements and RoI only.

Unfortunately, the placement figures of colleges especially those released by placement committees can be, to put it mildly, a little difficult to trust. A lot of the numbers releases are what can be called “creative accounting”. A reasonably reliable publicly available source of placement data is the mandatory disclosure released by the colleges. You can find this on the college website as mandated by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). To assuage student fears, a lot of colleges have started verifying placement statistics from external agencies like Credit Rating Information Services of India Limited (CRISIL). This helps build some confidence around the placement numbers. However, one should always take the placement figures with a large pinch of salt.

One should look at at least a five-to-seven year horizon when going through these RoI calculations, rather than an over-simplistic measure like average placement salary over course fees.MBA education is a long term investment. We have seen that the MBA colleges usually price themselves fairly, on the basis of their expenses on infrastructure, quality of faculty, etc., and with respect to the other colleges in the same cohort.

Location: The geographical location of the college (especially the top colleges) should not be a big factor when applying to a B-school. One look at the top MBA colleges in India will reveal that most of these colleges are anyways concentrated in and around metro cities, including Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. While there are a few colleges (for example, the newer IIMs) that are located in exotic locations, by and large one should be able to take a flight and reach any other part of the country within a few hours. The companies also do not have a lot of problems when it comes to visiting these locations for summer internships and final placements.

Further demographic bias should not color your choice of college as well. One will find that in almost all colleges around 80 per cent of the students hail from the top-10 most populated cities in the country.

If you are planning to avoid students from Delhi and therefore, not applying to colleges like IMI Delhi - International Management Institute, Fore School of Management - FSM, etc., you will be in for a bit of a shock when you find a lot of Delhiites in colleges in Mumbai and Bengaluru.

Specialisation: This might come as a surprise to you, but more than 80 per cent of the MBA graduates do not have a concrete idea about what the stream they would like to specialise in, when they enter a college. Further, even at the time of graduating, more than half of the class will still not be completely sure about what type of roles they are looking for. Have one look at the LinkedIn profiles of the graduating class of 2017, 18 and 19 and look at how many of them switched jobs and roles -- some in as little as six months’ time.

Further, given that technology is changing the way we work radically, one would be well advised to be proficient in all areas of management especially at the start of their career, rather than concentrate on a particular specialization. At greater risk are those who take up sector-specific programmes such as Telecom Management, IT Specialization, etc. While there are a lot of great companies in these sectors, one can be caught out by the business cycle in that particular sector.

Imagine how those specialising in finance from the graduating class of 2008 and 2009 would have felt during their placement season in the midst of the financial crisis.

We should treat these factors as tie-breakers rather than deal breakers. You should look into these only while choosing from colleges that are equal in all other aspects and that too, only after you have received an offer of admission, not at the application stage.

In the next part of this series, we will look at the factors that you should consider while applying to colleges.  

About the Author:

Vivek is the co-founder of TOPMYTEST – an online test prep website specialising in training students for CAT and other MBA entrance exams. Vivek was also the founding director of T.I.M.E Goa Center from 2009 to 2016. He cracked IIM Ahmedabad - Indian Institute of Management (IIMA) (PGP) when he appeared for CAT 2010 but declined to join. Prior to working in the test prep industry, he worked in GE Capital (now GENPACT) and HSBC Bank Middle East in various roles – Product Management, Financial Planning and Analysis, Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing.