Review of IIM Ranchi- A decent MBA college

I gave the CAT exam and when the results were announced, on the basis of my score and my category(EWS), I was shortlisted for the CAP round process where 9 IIMs (including new & baby both) conducted a single process for a further round of Personal Interview. One IIM conducts the PI(IIM Raipur conducted for our batch) & the PI score of the individual candidates was released to all other participating IIMs in the CAP process. The details of the CAP process are mailed via the conducting IIM to all the shortlisted candidates along with the application form and the dates. The application fee is NIL for the CAP round process for every candidate. Then each IIM releases the merit list based on their individual weightage given to different components such as CAT score, PI score, 10th, 12, & Graduation score, past work experience, extra co-curricular activities, etc.

Coming from the Information Technology background and the growing trends of data science and business analytics, I wanted to pursue my MBA in the Business analytics domain only. IIM Ranchi has started a specialized course on MBA-BA from this batch itself. Since this is the first batch for MBA-BA, the college has to still make changes to its curriculum by incorporating the feedback that our batch has given for future batches. We have a batch strength of 35 students, so the faculty: student ratio is 1:35. The academic qualifications of the faculties are from premier institutes across India and the world. The teaching methods depend solely on the faculty. Many of them focus on the industrial application part and many on the theoretical part. Every semester is for 3 months where we have to give mid-term & end-term of every subject along with the quizzes before each of them and submit a group project for that particular subject.

Summer internship opportunities are provided by the college itself where companies like Aditya Birla, Airtel, Bain & Company, Gartner, Bloomberg, and many more such companies along with many start-ups visit the campus and offer a decent stipend for the students. The average stipend for our seniors batch for their summer internships was around Rs. 80,000-90,000 and for our batch, it has not been officially declared but we are assuming it to be on a little higher side. Apart from the summer internships, various live projects opportunities are also provided by the placement committee and various clubs & committees for the students. The roles offered by the companies are similar to what the final year student gets like Business Analyst, Financial Analyst, Ops & Supply Chain Analyst, Team Lead, Product Manager, etc.

Our college provides placement assistance to all students. Companies start visiting the campus for the final year placements & the summer internship placement for 1st-year students around their 5th & 2nd semester respectively. More than 100 companies come & visit for the campus placement including Bain & Company, American Express, Accenture, Infosys, Airtel, and many more for the profiles of consultant, data analyst, financial analyst, business analyst, marketing manager, etc. Official figures of the average & highest package are not yet revealed for this year, but as per previous year average package was around 15 lakhs, median around 14.5 lakhs, and the highest was around 30 lakhs for final year students. For summer internships, the average stipend was around Rs. 80,000-90,000 for 2 months. The placement record for IIM Ranchi is incredible with 100% placement.

The fee structure for the batch of 2021-23 is around 17 lakhs for all the courses which the college offers, be it General MBA or MBA-HR or MBA-BA which is 1 lakh more than our previous batch. There is no scholarship which is provided by our college with respect to merit or reservation but the college collaborated with some of the corporates from where students can get financial assistance on the basis of merit subject to their family's annual income. College provides assistance in the Summer Internships as well as Final Year placements for every student. This year, both of these processes ended by December last week. The official figures for the stipend and the CTC offered are currently not been revealed till now so I can't comment on that. But the previous year's placement reports are published & are available on the IIM Ranchi's official website where last year average and median CTC offered was around 14.5 to 15 lakhs per annum and the average stipend for internships was around 80-90K for 2 months.

Life at the IIM Ranchi campus is of mixed feelings since we don't have our permanent campus yet. Also due to Covid-19, the classes are online and many students haven't seen the campus life at IIM-R. We have our annual fest Agon-Rush which is usually conducted in February every year where every club & committee organizes events, case study competitions & quizzes. This year Anuv Jain and Rajat Sharma were part of our fest. There are many clubs & committees which are student-run like Digitalytics, Conundrum, Finopsis, E-cell, Dramebaaz, and many more. Being a part of any club or committee, there is an added responsibility, but a student learns a lot there since the student is organizing various events, reaching out to corporates, and sharing the bond with seniors better than their fellow batchmates. In the hostel, the sports committee organizes cricket, baseball matches. There is a dedicated tennis court and indoor games area where students can play carrom, table tennis, etc.

I gave the CAT exam where the pattern of the paper can change every year depending on the IIM which is conducting the CAT in that particular year. After clearing the CAT, we are shortlisted for further rounds where mainly PI was conducted due to Covid-19. For preparing PI, I went through all the major events and current affairs which happened in the last 1 year, reading about the college subjects and having the knowledge of the city or state you are coming from. Along with this, I prepared for the standard PI questions like introducing myself, where do I see myself in the 5 years, etc. In the interview, apart from the standard PI questions, they asked me questions from my academic such as Cloud computing, advantages & disadvantages, who was my favourite actor & then subsequent questions relating to my favourite actor's qualities which I have also displayed in my life. In the last they asked me if I had any questions for them, this is also one of the standard questions only.