A Farce that B School Rankings are!

So it’s that time of the year again when 1000s of MBA aspirants in the country search for the best B School which will consider their candidature based on their entrance scores. We look around, talk to people, look at rankings and even visit career counselors! We spend days and weeks taking the all-important decision which will shape our careers! I remember my time 2 years back. This decision was probably the most important of my life! And today, as I'm about to graduate from my MBA I feel life has come a full circle...

The inspiration to write this post comes from the front page of Times B School edition dated 27^th February 2015. What did it contain? Obviously the famed B School rankings! And just because I had some time at hand, I decided to browse through the rankings. The result shocked and amused me at the same time! The list of top 50 comprised of some institutes about whom I had never heard before at all! And I had done enough research before making the choice for myself to say that I have at least heard of all institutes worthy of a top 50 ranking. And browsing beyond the 50^th rank was hilarious to say the least!!! My thoughts with aspirants who rely on such a farce to make the decision of their lifetime!

As part of Public Relations Team of my school, I've had a chance to work on B School rankings and closely understand how the process works... So here's a small attempt to pen down my learnings and in the meanwhile, help an aspirant or two to make their choices...

So what exactly is this whole funda of B School rankings? It’s basically an exercise undertaken by supposedly reputed publishing houses to rank the 100s of B Schools in the country, supposedly based upon their quality, to supposedly help aspirants choose which one they should join. And what this whole funda of B School Rankings ACTUALLY is? An unreported fraud of providing untrue information to students to incorrectly influence their most important decision. Why? To help “profit” some who take advantage of limited resources accessible to aspirants to evaluate the many available options. Sad reality!

So as a member of PR Team, what I saw was that these publishers collaborate with some survey agencies for data collection. These agencies send a long 15-20 page form to schools asking for data. What data? Admission process, fees, kind of programs, faculty details, kind of research, industry interaction, infrastructure, placements and so on. Seems legit right? Now the real problem starts. Not all agencies consider all the data. Some may give a high weightage to infrastructure, some may not consider infrastructure at all! And not one agency verifies the data provided by the schools. A school may claim it owns half the city as its infrastructure, sign on the form and submit and no one will object! And does the final ranking give a true picture of the data provided? I would never know! All a college has access to is the final ranking of that college in relation to other colleges. A college is never given access to the data provided by other colleges to facilitate verification of the ranking!

That, is exactly where the fraud is! Having been through various rankings and the whole process of ranking a B School, I will never understand how an Amity Business School and a Welingkar School is ranked above an IIM Indore. Or a Jagan institute is ranked above a NITIE. Or how an IIM is ranked 107th in the list! Only explanation to this absurd trend that I can think of is some under the table deal meant to incorrectly favour one or more involved parties. Sadly, it really leaves aspirants with no options to look at while taking the all-important life decision.

The state of affairs is really sad! Will there ever be a change in the system? I don't know! But in this situation, where the few trust worthy ranking agencies like Pagalguy have decided to discontinue their rankings, what can aspirants actually do? Well, if any aspirant is reading this post, I can suggest a few things that could help...

1) Talk to friends who are already pursuing MBA from good institutes. They will generally have a good idea about where a college stands.

2) Go through placement reports carefully instead of relying on rankings.

3) Create your own simple ranking! Sounds tough? It isn’t actually. Find out information about a college yourself. Look at parameters which are important to you. For example, consider the simple weighted average method. Consider parameters like Infrastructure, Placements, Number of Students, Location etc. and give weightage to each based on your personal priorities. Then give marks to the institutes you are considering based on the information you find out from their website. Multiply the marks with the weight assigned for that parameter, add the multiplied score across parameters and BOOM! You have a pretty reliable result that will work for you.

4) If you still want to consider the rankings, use common sense! If you have been seriously preparing for an MBA, you would know, Ball Park, which colleges make up the top 10 list. When you look at a rating, observe carefully if the list has the expected names in top 10. If yes, it might be genuine. Evaluate further. Go into details like parameter wise rankings. And do not look for an exact number for your college. Look at a round about figure and average it across different B School rankings. Consider at least 5-6 relatively reliable rankings and average them out for the colleges you are considering (When I was taking my decision, I considered Pagalguy and TIME (the coaching institute) as some of the reliable rankings for this exercise). You will get some idea that way.

5) Lastly and most importantly, use your personal judgement after doing all of the above. Your judgement and decision making is what you will be paid for post your MBA! All the best!

While education today has become the most profitable business, we can only hope that 1 day we will get some regulation into this rankings business which will eliminate horse trading and agencies will stop playing with the future of aspirants! How about attaching a detailed result which explains the ranking given to each school along with the data provided? Brings in the much needed transparency?

Disclaimer: I do not accuse any of the mentioned schools to have “bought” a rank. Without a relevant proof, I would never know if they did. But the lack of transparency is what I am questioning here. If any wrong doers are offended by this post, be rest assured it was totally intentional!

Summer Internship:- A cross over from IT to Manufacturing

Summer Internship, probably the most important phase of your MBA education. Why? Should an 8 week long internship really matter that much for most of us who have a substantial work experience? Well, it does! They say 70% of MBA students come from the IT industry. And in a top B School, in all probability, you will not really be going back to an IT industry for your summers. So? Is an IT industry that different from the other industries? I didn’t think so before starting with my internship, but today, almost half way into my summers in a manufacturing cum FMCG firm, I can definitely say it is! Very very different!

After a completely crazy day 0 of summer placements at Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management, IIT Bombay, I found myself bagging a very lucrative and sought after job. That of internship in the numero uno personal care firm in the world, L’Oréal. So here I was, from a typical IT job for 2 years to now working for a “cool” company L’Oréal from a completely different sector (now you may argue that L’Oréal does not clearly classify as a manufacturing company. But I hope you get the point I am trying to make through this post). So for the first time, I could give a convincing answer to the questions people asked me back home. “Tumhari company banaati kya hai?” And actually, not too many people even asked me that question. All I was asked was “Accha woh colour banaane waali company?” or “Woh Aishwarya Rai waali company?” That was the first change moving from an IT company to a manufacturing one. You could tell people what the company exactly did and what your job exactly was in the company, AND they could make sense of it!

This ofcourse, was before I joined my internship. The induction phase that we had about a month before joining, was the first step for most of us into the world of manufacturing, sales and distribution. As a welcome gift, we got L’Oréal goodies. Yes, company manufactured products and not a shopping voucher like in my earlier job. Another “tangible” difference between a services and a manufacturing company.

The 3 day long induction program, showed us what was in store for us in the weeks and hopefully years ahead. No random coffee breaks, no table tennis breaks, no romance breaks for that matter. Here in manufacturing, people work! And work hard! In the little over 3 weeks so far, I haven’t seen my bosses take too many “breaks” from work. The laptop, the phone and every other device they are connected to is all tuned into serious work. And they are talking money to the tune of lakhs and crores. A certain change from the IT talk of lines of code and number of defects. Not to say that they do not have fun here, but the time and the kind of fun is very different from what we did in and IT industry. Occasional team outings and parties is the only time you will have fun. Rest of the time, your work is your only fun!

Oh and another major change stepping into manufacturing. Here, you do not have a manager. You have a boss! The terminology is very different. Manager, lead, project manager quickly changes to boss, super boss and head of a function. Besides, the “first names only” policy does not apply here. You need to call your boss “Sir”, shake his hand in the morning, say good morning and be more professional than casual. You could call it formal, but then at that level, you have to maintain a degree of professionalism. And it does help you in your work, in your dealings with clients, suppliers and other stakeholders.

Then another major difference is a God like software that we call Microsoft Excel. I thought I had used a lot of Excel in my stint in the IT industry. Writing test cases, maintaining records, transactions reports etc. But I realize now, that I hadn’t even scratched the surface! Management, would not be possible without excel. And the capabilities it has built into it, is amazing! There is so much that one can do using Excel. So much to make management more of a science than art.

Would the top level management in an IT company be very similar to what I describe here? I couldn’t say for sure but I doubt that it would be. Our IT industry is heavily influenced by the American culture. Much lesser so in manufacturing. I suspect that is primarily the difference between the two. Also, the stakes are much higher in a manufacturing job. There is no easy “Ctrl+Z” for your work after all.

The difference from IT that I have seen in my early days into the manufacturing/FMCG industry are significant. I was apprehensive before entering L’Oréal just like I was before entering my first job in IT. But I had enjoyed my 2 years in IT and likewise, I have enjoyed my first few weeks in this industry and L’Oréal. I realize I do not have any particular preference of one over the other. A good friend once told me, that I have a tendency to adapt to the needs of any and every job that demands my efforts. Find that quite true today.

So how would I compare IT with manufacturing? I guess I wouldn’t. It would be like comparing apples with oranges. I believe both are unique in their own way and can interest people across the spectrum. They say manufacturing is the backbone of an economy. I would say manufacturing and IT are like the 2 eyes of a person. Without any one, you will just see plain images. For a complete 3 dimensional view, you need both working just fine.