Best B-School Survey 2010: Benchmarking guide

Best B-School Survey 2010: Benchmarking guide 

The most definitive survey of Indian business schools is out.

Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad

The Business Standard Best Business Schools Survey 2010 shows that the country's top business schools are the Indian Institutes of Management in Ahmedabad and Kolkata, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade in New Delhi, Institute of Management Technology at Ghaziabad, Management Development Institute at Gurgaon, National Institute of Industrial Engineering in Mumbai and Xavier Labour Relation Institute at Jamshedpur.

Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata

There are several business school surveys done every year. But these are all perception surveys and are limited to the top schools. So they touch upon a small part of the universe. This also runs the danger of excluding the actual information about the business schools. Such perception-based surveys have another risk - they assume that respondents (aspirants, students and executives from companies) are well-informed about all the institutes. This might not always be true.

Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi

The Business Standard survey, in contrast, is not based on perceptions but on rigorous analysis of everything that goes into making a business school. All business schools are rated on five parameters: Intellectual capital, admissions & placements, infrastructure, industry interface and governance. Each of these can be measured objectively. There is hence no scope for subjectivity or any bias. Of course, each of the five parameters has a different weight which is decided by an expert committee. The survey does not rank the institutes but puts them in seven hierarchical categories: Super League, A1, A2, A3, A4, B1 and B2.

Management Development Institute, Gurgaon

The Super League:

Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad

Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata

Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi

Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad

Management Development Institute, Gurgaon

National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai

Xavier Labour Relation Institute at Jamshedpur

National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai

There are close to 2,000 business schools in India, more than anywhere else in the world. This poses serious problems for the key stakeholders - aspiring students as well as employers. Take aspiring students first. How do they choose the right business school? How are two schools different from each other? The task is not easy for companies either who hire from these business schools. It is not easy to screen each and every student thoroughly. In this scenario, the reputation of the business school becomes all important. This is a gap that the Business Standard survey plugs. The survey is open to business schools all over India. The eligibility criterion is that they should be approved by the All India Council for Technical Education or the government or a university.

Also, at least two batches of students should have passed out of the institute. This is to assess the placements that happen at the campus. Questionnaires are sent out to the business schools. The responses are tabulated and double-checked by IMRB. Inflated claims and discrepancies are thus weeded out. As many as 50 of these business schools were visited by IMRB executives to verify the information they had submitted. This includes all those institutes that showed huge variation in scores between 2009 and 2010.

For the latest survey, questionnaires were sent to more than 1,500 business schools. Out of these, 255 sent their entries within the time limit.

Source: Business Standard