ISB to admit students to either of its campus in Hyderabad and Mohali irrespective of their rank

Updated on: Thursday, December 20, 2012

India's rapidly expanding college education scene may have a new model in the Indian School of Business's 'one school, two campuses' idea, to tackle the phenomenon of campus bias among corporate recruiters.

Even as India's top colleges expand, setting base in various cities and even abroad, they are grappling with the problem of securing equally lucrative placement offers for students across their various campuses.

As one IIM faculty put it, in India, a student is quickly becoming a product of a particular campus and not just the brand of institute. Thus, the campus one graduates from matters more than ever before.

However, the Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business (ISB) has tried a new model to beat that monotony. Ranked 20th in the FT London Global MBA ranking 2012, ISB has adopted the idea of one school, two campuses.

Students were admitted to either campus — Hyderabad or Mohali — irrespective of their ranks. Sriram Gopalakrishnan, ISB's director for marketing and communications says, "We wanted the same kind of students — both in terms of composition and accomplishment." So it was natural that the campus placement would also be "campus neutral" and integrated.

ISB deputy dean Deepak Chandra says integrated placements ensure that both the campuses have similar opportunities. So students from Hyderabad are flown to Mohali when the recruitment season kicks in at ISB. Later, the process shifts to Hyderabad and residents of the Mohali campus travel south.

With so many new IITs, IIMs, NITs and IISERs, there is no homogeneity in students across campuses. "The recruiter knows that a student from IIT-Kanpur is very different in many respects than one from any other IIT. So is the case with the IIMs or with the NITs," the IIM faculty says.

Few new campuses have been able to replicate the kind of placement offers that their home campuses secure. That is because, traditionally, students lower down on the merit list have opted for the new campuses.

For instance, a student, irrespective of his or her rank, would rather join the Pilani campus of Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) in Rajasthan's Jhunjhunu, than go to the same institute's full-fledged campuses in Dubai, Goa or Hyderabad, set up in recent years.

Though Pilani does not have an airport, nor is it directly accessible by rail, top companies still prefer their representatives enduring a five-hour road journey to BITS there, rather than miss out on hiring a bright student.

M S Dasgupta, chief of the BITS placement unit, says the college invites prospective recruiters, offering them a choice of campuses that their executives would like to visit. "But I have to acknowledge that Pilani has an edge over the other campuses," Dasgupta says.

Mumbai-based Narsee Monjee Institute, which also offers management programmes in Bangalore and Hyderabad, prefers an independent placement processes. Most students and recruiters prefer the Mumbai venue over the other two cities, their PRO said.

The haloed IITs and IIMs, which have for long churned out some of the brightest students, have often ruled out joint placements when suggested by review committees.

Independent placements or integrated ones? The question confounds many colleges with ambitious expansion plans. Only time will tell which model enriches all — students, the college and recruiters.

ISB to admit students to either of its campus in Hyderabad and Mohali irrespective of their rank

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