IIM Ahmedabad 2019 Placements – 1 Year MBA / MBA for Executives (PGPX)  – Full Report

IIM Ahmedabad has released the placement report for the One Year MBA / MBA for Executives (Post Graduate Program for Executives – PGPX) Class of 2019 on August 6, 2019.

IIM Ahmedabad is one of the few B-Schools to adhere to the Indian Placement Reporting Standards (IPRS) as per which placement numbers are provided as per a pre-approved standard format and the all placement numbers are are audited for accuracy by an external agency. The IIM Ahmedabad 1 Year MBA / PGPX Placement Report 2019 has been audited by the Brickwork Ratings India Pvt Ltd.

The final placement process for the Class of 2019 of the IIM Ahmedabad One Year MBA Programme, the full-time Post Graduate Programme in Management for Executives (PGPX), started in November 2018 and was completed in June end 2019. 

IIM A 1 Year MBA / MBA for Executives Placements 2019  – Highlights

• Higher domestic salary in 2019 compared to 2018: IIM Ahmedabad has shared that the highest domestic salary for One Year MBA / MBA For Executives (PGPX) has also gone up to Rs.60 Lacs per annum in 2019 as compared to Rs.54.6 LPA in 2018

Looking at joining a One Year MBA? Scouring rankings of the best One Year MBA programs is a great way to start your search. Rankings, when they are good, can give you a 360 degree view of a B-School or course on all the important parameters when you are figuring out What MBA to Select?

Outlook’s MBA Ranking should be one such ranking since it comes from a publication known in every household in India. But is Outlook’s ranking accurate?  Let’s find out!

Top 10 Colleges For a One Year MBA Programme 2018-2019

1. IIM, Calcutta
2. XLRI, Jamshedpur
3. Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai
4. SPJIMR, Mumbai
5. IIM, Shillong
6. IIT, Chennai
7. DMS, IIT, Delhi
8. IMI, Delhi
9. KJSIMSR, Mumbai
10. SDMIMD, Mysore

B-Schools That Deserve A Top 10 Rank

Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIM C)

Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI), Jamshedpur

SP Jain Institute of Management Research, (SPJIMR) Mumbai

All three B-Schools have had a good track record vis-a-vis the quality of students, infrastructure, international tie-ups, placements and quality of faculty for their One Year MBA and deserve to be ranked among the Top 10 Institutes offering a One Year MBA.

B-Schools That Are Missing From the Top 10

Indian School of Business, Hyderabad 

Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM A) 

Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM B)

Indian Institute of Management, Indore (IIM I)

Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIM L) 

These are some of the top B-Schools with excellent One Year MBA Programs that are missing from the ranking.

If you came looking for the ranking of India’s best executive MBA programs (part-time programs suitable for people with 10+ years work experience) and not One Year MBA courses (full time courses suitable for people with 5+ years of work experience) – please read Top 10 Executive MBA Programs in India

All these B-Schools have well established One Year MBA Programs with average salaries in placements in the Rs 20-30 lakh/ annum range.

Tier 1 recruiters such as Google, Goldman Sachs &, Deloitte hire from these programs in middle to senior management roles.

These B-Schools are respected not just in India, but have made a mark on respected global rankings.

Indian School of Business is Ranked the No.1 B-School in India for its 1 Year Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP) as per the Financial Times Global MBA Ranking 2018-2019 while IIM A’s One Year MBA (Post graduate programme in Management for Executives / PGPX) at IIM A is ranked No.2 in the same ranking.

If one looks at the quality of students joining the course,  these B-Schools sit right at the top. Average GMAT scores at these institutes hover around 710-720. 

Outlook mentions that “Various B-schools across India were contacted for participation, among which 145+ B-schools responded and provided their objective data within the stipulated time.”.

In could be possible that these B-Schools have been excluded from the ranking because they did not respond in time/ chose to participate. 

Does this ranking then stand for anything? 

If Outlook’s ranking has excluded top B-Schools since they did not respond, Outlook should clearly say so upfront and inform the reader about which B-Schools were excluded for this reason.

Automatically giving top slots in the ranking to less deserving B-Schools, if that is what has happened here, is misleading.  

Prospective MBA students take these rankings at face value and such a practice would lead them to a wrong decision.  

The Odd Birds in The Ranking

Great Lakes, Chennai, has been awarded Rank 3 for its One Year PGPM program. It is unclear by what standard.

Outlook India’s 2018-2019 Ranking of Top 10 Institutes With One-Year Programmes

Great Lakes’ placements, recruiters base and roles on offer are not comparable to those at the top B-Schools in India. 

The average CTC salary at Great Lakes for the Class of 2018 was Rs 11.21 Lakhs p.a., which is below average for a One Year MBA course in India. The lowest salary for the Class was Rs 8 Lakh p.a.

As we shared earlier in the article, top B-Schools such as ISB and IIM A offering a One Year MBA are able to secure Rs 18 lakh-25 lakh+ avg. salaries for their students. 

Alumni reviews about Great Lakes, Chennai, like most other things on the internet are split between the positive and the negative. The positive reviews talk of good mentors and a great campus, others are very critical and talk of poor placements & dressing up of placement data. 

Some of the reviews are anonymous – this is understandable, as current students who are dependent on the institute for placements would not want to attract the institute’s ire by sharing their views openly under their own name. 

IMI, Delhi, featured at Rank 8, has had a rough ride with its Executive PGDM. 

While the sanctioned intake at IMI is 60, the Class of 2018 consisted of just 10 self-sponsored students (another 6-8 are sponsored by their companies). IMI’s class size has been shrinking steadily over the past years.  

The average class size in a One Year MBA in India course in India is 60-100 students. Some B-Schools such as ISB have a 1000 strong intake for the PGP.

It is clear that IMI’s course has a low demand from students. The ranking awarded by Outlook is therefore surprising.

KJ Somaiya’s Executive PGDM, another school included in the Top 10, has not had a great run either. The placement statistics put up the institute on its website show that the average salary for the Class of 2018 was just Rs 10.7 lakh. 

The Ranking’s Twilight Zone

The inclusion of IIT, Delhi and IIT, Chennai is possibly the most confounding aspect of the ranking. IIT, Delhi offers an Executive MBA (part-time course for executives) – it doesn’t offer a One Year MBA. Similarly, IIT, Chennai offers a 2 Year Executive MBA, it doesn’t offer a One Year MBA at all!

The inclusion of SDMIMD, Mysore in the Top 10 B-Schools for a One Year Programme published in 2018 takes the cake since the first batch of the One Year Post Graduate Certificate Program in Management hasn’t even started as yet!

Outlook’s rankings have had such goof ups in the past. Outlook had included IIM Kozhikode’s 2 Year Executive MBA course in the 2013-2014 One Year MBA ranking. 

What takes the cake is the inclusion of SDMIMD, Mysore in the Top 10!

The institute has announced that the first batch of  its One Year Post Graduate Certificate Programme in Management (PGCM) will start in August 2019.

There is no batch yet, no track record the quality of students who are choosing the course, of placements or of feedback from students on the course quality – and yet, somehow, Outlook has deemed the course worthy of a Top 10 rank! 

See the anomaly on SDMIMD’s website where the the Top 10 Ranking gained in 2018 ranking is showcased next to the course commencement date of August 2019!

SDMIMD’s Rank 10 in Outlook’s 2018 Ranking showcased on the college website – right next to the course’s commencement date in August 2019

Unclear Methodology

Outlook’s MBA Ranking 2018-2019 covers both Two Year MBA Programmes & One Year Management programs. 

The publication has published a detailed methodology for the ranking of the Two Year MBA Programmes, namely – perceptual factors, placements, infrastructure & facilities, academic excellence, selection process, personality development & industry exposure.

The publication has however not mentioned the methodology for ranking B-Schools offering a One Year MBA. 

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!

I am a Manufacturing professional with 7 years of experience in strategy and product realization in the automotive (Toyota) and aerospace sectors (Cyient).

Additionally, I hold a Master’s in Manufacturing Engineering (Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor). My One Year MBA journey started last August with the realization that this format of management education would be a good addition to my learning endeavors and do wonders for the resume as well.

Two months and countless GMAT mock tests later, I managed a 710 score. I applied to 4 good schools (IIM-A, B and C and ISB) and got admit cards from three and a reject after interview from ISB.

I chose IIM-A after a visit to the institute early this month for a KT and farewell session with the current batch.

Upon careful consideration of what went right and not all that right in my admissions package, it is my strong belief that my USP lay in the way that I projected my profile. To further validate my belief, the schools in which my applications were successful were exactly the ones in which I was able to “present myself my way”.

Let me elaborate on why I feel the presentation of one’s profile plays a clinching role in MBA applications.

Most B-Schools have an application to interview ratio of 3:1 and a similar interview to admit ratio, which makes me feel that the first process is an elimination round whereas the second process is selection.

Thus, the focus in the first round is whether you are good enough. In the second round, it is whether you are better than another, or many others. Thus, you (and your profile) must stand out from the rest.

However, to be brutally honest, most of us have regular profiles with rare nuggets of extra-ordinariness. If you are in the majority (Indian IT Male), the reckoning gets tougher. Hence, it is important that you project these nuggets as strongly and as visually coherent as is possible.

That too, in a time bound environment where you have to make the best utilization of the interview question “Tell me about yourself”.

Below is my approach to this situation. Those of you who have an operations background may recognize this as being in the ‘A3 format’, made famous by the first organization I worked for, Toyota.

Please Click on Image to Enlarge

I found the art of making A3 reports fascinating, and have been using this in varied situations like preparing for interviews, appraisal discussions and so on. Trust me, this process is yet to fail.

Preparing this sheet for the first time took up a lot of space in the head and a lot of time. However, once a basic format is done and you are comfortable, it is easy to keep updating and using this sheet in different places.

A distinct advantage of preparing a written document is that it helps you to form clear, distilled ideas from the vague thoughts you might have about many aspects of your profile.

In this, I see a parallel with the whole process of business case/plan creation. A clear benefit I had from this approach was that I used close to half an hour to go through this sheet and hence was able to completely control the course of my interviews at the three IIMs! (On a lighter note, my problem with the ISB interview was that they never asked me to “Tell me about yourself” and I did not get a chance to open up this sheet ).

Some guidelines to help you prepare your own profile sheet:

• The best tool to prepare such a sheet would be MS Excel. In my opinion, Excel is one of the most versatile business applications ever!
• Before you write a single word, have all the page, font and structure formatting ready. This will help in allocating space to different sections of your profile based on your priorities. Of course, the sheet best works when using A3, landscape orientation.
• Use pictorial representation as much as possible. Minimize the use of words. Most people have high retention power for pictures and very less for words.
• Highlight special achievements like there is no tomorrow. Your profile should literally stand out!
• Use a structured way of storytelling. It helps in organizing thoughts. One such structure could be 5W and 1H: Why, What, Who, Where, When & How.
• Write your own profile yourself. It will be an amazing learning experience and don’t let go off that chance for yourself!

Aniruddha Srinath, who is in the PGPX (2016-17) batch at IIM Ahmedabad, has more than 7 years experience in Manufacturing Strategy and Operations. He has a Master’s Degree in Manufacturing Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA.

IIM A’s One Year MBA rises two slots this year from 26 to 24 in the widely respected Financial Times Global MBA Ranking 2016 and is ranked numero uno for career progression.

Career progression is defined by FT as the change in the level of seniority and size of company alumni are working in now, versus before their MBA.

ISB’s One Year MBA (PGP) is ranked 29, a rise of 4 slots from 33 last year.

IIM B’s One Year MBA (Executive Post Graduate Programme in Management – EPGP) is ranked 62 – a rise of 20 slots from the 82 rank the school bagged last year.  

FT says, “Created just a decade ago, the one-year, full-time residential PGPX programme from the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad is ranked number one for the career progress of its alumni this year…(IIM A is) widely regarded as the top business school in India, a reputation earned for its two-year pre-experience PGP programme, and ranked 15th in the world in the FT’s 2015 Masters in Management rankings.”

The Financial Times Global MBA Ranking ranks the top full-time (one-year and two-year MBA) programmes.

In keeping with international norms for an MBA course, only post-experience programmes make the cut in the ranking. While Indian B-Schools insist that their pre-experience programmes (two-year PGP/ PGDM) are ‘MBAs’, these are ranked by FT in a different ranking of Masters in Management (MIM/ MBM) courses which are meant for freshers and recent graduates.

It is perhaps worth noting here that One Year MBA programmes are the only programmes from India to have bagged global MBA accreditation from Association of MBAs (AMBA) – two-year PGP programmes are accredited as MBMs by AMBA. (Read: B-Schools are Businesses too!)

It is also worth adding here that this ranking does not certify IIM A as the best B-School in the world – though this may well be the headline you read tomorrow in national newspapers.

Last year, when the FT 2015 rankings were published, the majority of newspapers in India wrongly reported that IIM A has been ranked numero uno. That’s not the case – FT brings out a separate B-School ranking every year. This ranking is only for the MBA (PGPX) programme of IIM A.   

No other MBA prgramme from India makes it to the ranking this year.

Incidentally the top slot in the ranking is also taken by a one-year full time MBA – INSEAD’s MBA is ranked No.1 overall this year. 

Financial Times Global MBA Ranking 2016

Source: Financial Times