The 3 day ISB Experience

Question

On behalf of GMAT Club I visited Indian School of Business on March 3rd and had an amazing three day journey. Before going into the day wise experience, I would like to share the ISB PGP program in brief!

The Campus

The campus is at the heart of the IT Hub at Hyderabad. Its a resort for the students for a year and exhaustively has everything that a student might need for a fine living experience. Only a few international schools could compare with the pomp of the ISB campus. A pretty snapshot is here

The full time 1 Year PGP program

The PGP program runs for 51 weeks straight with 8 terms of 30-45 days each. The terms are extremely intense and you hardly have time to do anything else. Its a heavy duty immersive experience. The classes are almost 70% case based. Although HBS cases are mostly followed but ISB has taken an initiative to create new emerging market based cases and has around 50 cases in its belt. Premier Indian B Schools follow ISB reference cases which are published by HBS (Harvard) and Richard Ivey (Western Ontario). ISB Currently has 50 permanent faculty residing on campus and a host of visiting faculties joining in from all parts of the world. I had the chance to meet a Booth Alumni, residing at ISB, who takes Corporate Finance classes and worked with the Indian Finance minister with the 2013 Budget. Although, being a one year program, the PGP model does not allow internships but it has tie ups with recruiters to provide a sandbox experience (course credit-based) in which students have to work with MNCs in a particular problem involving Marketing/Consulting/Finance etc. This can run upto 4-8 weeks and works in tandem with the term courses. ISB is also the ONLY AACSB accredited South Asian Business School. ISB does not have an university status yet because Indian University has to abide by certain non-merit based reservations (I highly support ISB here). Point to note here that the school operates as a not for profit organization. Having 13 different research centers spread out through the country, ISB also has the concept of area leaders for different functions. For example Wharton functions as the area leader in Finance, Kellogg in Marketing and MIT Sloan in operations.

Students at ISB

Students form the stars of ISB. The class kicks off with club registration and election for presidents. Right now there are 13 active clubs at the Indian School of Business, Marketing, Finance and Consulting being the most popular in 2012. The entrepreneurial club is proud to have 50+ entrepreneurs coming out in a span of 5 years, most of which started their business while at ISB. Internationals have more presence here than in any other business school in India and brings great diversity to the table. The average age is 26 and the percentage of women is 29. I got a chance to interact with several current students at ISB and I got in touch with a 24 year old Australian Indian, a 41 year old architect, a 32 year old entrepreneur. So the diversity is intense. Students at ISB have done exceptionally well in their past academics which forms one of the core criteria of admission at ISB. The average GMAT score is already 715 and moving upward. The admission team made it pretty clear that getting into ISB will be extremely difficult if your GMAT is sub 600.

ISB Life

If your spouse wanted to spend a vacation in an exotic country with all the privileges and comfort of the first world, thats a totally legit reason of applying to ISB

It has the state of the art recreational center, student and executive lounges, fancy and low budget restaurants, day care centers, studio and shared apartments and SO MUCH more. I guess a picture says a thousand words so here goes!

Stay Tuned for my Day wise experience with the ISB Dean, the admissions team, the students and alums and the curriculum development team

Day 1 at ISB

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It has the state of the art recreational center, student and executive lounges, fancy and low budget restaurants, day care centers, studio and shared apartments and SO MUCH more. I guess a picture says a thousand words so here goes! https://www.isb.edu/Campustour/Photos/Academic_Atrium2.jpg https://www.isb.edu/Campustour/Photos/Academic_Atrium5.jpg Stay Tuned for my Day wise experience with the ISB Dean, the admissions team, the students and alums and the curriculum development team

Day 1 at ISB

MBACrystalBall · Answer

Nice debrief, Souvik! The aerial photograph looks good. Hope you didn't sky-dive to the campus location to get that pic :-)

Looking forward to your other posts.

MacFauz · Answer

Actually.. I think skydiving to get a picture would have been a great idea..

souvik101990 · Answer

Indian School of Business Visit  
Day 1 was extremely informative and after an elaborate south Indian breakfast, we soon headed to a presentation hall where the admission team was waiting for us.
I will try to keep the points of the presentation in bullets because these will be really helpful for future international and domestic applicants.

PGP Program overview  - Hima Bindu (admissions team)

Area Leaders : Associates of specific subjects from associate schools including Wharton (finance), Kellogg (marketing), MIT (operations) 
 Research centers in 13 different areas 
 Healthcare- Special focus on Healthcare management and consultancy considering 2X healthcare expansion in India by 2020 
 Merit Based school NO CASTES- Hence no university status! In my opinion its a bold but truly commendable decision by the admission team. 
 Center of emerging markets- Community development  
  AACSB accredited  – Only south Asian school to have the accredition 
 Famiy business program  (NEW) – Not Full time 
 PGPMAX program for senior execs – Min 10 years of exp 
 29% women 
 5% truly international students  
 50 permanent faculty- 100+ visit ISB annually from all over the world 
 Case study- being independent of HBS. ISB publishes its own India based cases jointly with HBS and Ivey (Western Ontario) 
 ISB is NOT FOR PROFIT

ISB Admission presentation  - Mr. Kannan (Director of admissions)
 Admission committee consists of admissions, alumni, recruiters, faculty and deans
Current students volunteer to read applications and provides opinions.
A 3rd executive from the admissions team looks through the application and read opinions and calls for interview.
 There is a strong possibility of the removal of the video essay next year  
  770 intake since the class of 2013 keeping the admission ratio constant 
 Campuses are NOT selected on the basis of profiles, however a near identical profile homogeneity is maintained. 
 Campus interaction in the form of exchange opportunities 
 In spite of having a HIGHER admission percentages the selectivity is similar because the applicant pool is getting stronger.  
 1 year program with the same amount of contact hours (680 hours at ISB comnpared to 720 hours in a typical 2 year program) 
 Experimental learning program with recruiters (this serves as a sandbox internship experience) 
 PaEV- Planning and Entrepreneurial venture  
 Consulting, BFSI and IT are the top 3 recruiters with 13, 14 and 21 percentages. 
 Largest consultant employers: Deloitte, McKinsey, Booz 
 Most of the recruits join the Indian arm of the companies. 
 Sales and Marketing: Unilever. P&G however has a lower presence 
 EDI- Entrepreneurship development Initiative provides Financial support, Mentoring and other resources. 
 Non profit recruits have a 2 year loan forgiveness program. 
 GMAT and academic record is almost given a 40-50% weight. 
 Need based, merit based and corporate scholarships. However full tuition waivers are NOT possible and 50% tuition waiver is the maximum. 
 Most international candidates are (600)
  Indian passport holders localed internationally  
 Indian origin International passport holder 
 Truly internationals (25-30) with an admission rate of 50%

Doing Business in India 
 ISB does not fail to recognize that foreign perception of India is still not entirely satisfactory. It is still a slightly un-exaggerated version of

https://content.screencast.com/users/SouvikB/folders/Jing/media/5ab24db8-1280-4a63-9275-f9d33ec5e893/2013-03-22_1555.png

However ISB is extremely determined to show other more important facets of the Indian business-friendly culture which is pretty evident from stats such as:

https://content.screencast.com/users/SouvikB/folders/Jing/media/6b0241de-a8cd-4ed0-9737-4c3917f1cec1/2013-03-22_1600.png

https://content.screencast.com/users/SouvikB/folders/Jing/media/05fd064e-5360-4e69-821f-c4c27e417fd0/2013-03-22_1601.png

India continues to be one of the major growing economies and provides one of the greatest places to work post MBA

AbhiJ · Answer

This is unsolicited. Feel ISB would do much better to offer 2 options for MBA 1 year and 2 year. The same courses, the same professors just some space between classes and some additional assignments to keep students busy. I am saying this because lot of people in ISB (approximately 50-70%) come from tech background and looking to switch industries. 2 years with internship would make ISB even better.

bagdbmba · Answer

Resonate with you AbhiJ...If ISB takes it up in coming days it would be really great...!

souvik101990 · Answer

I hardly think it will.
It still maintains that its "two year program squeezed in the one year" is the ideal model. And I met with some alums of ISB and other top US B Schools in the conference who agreed and said "the second year was pretty much a waste"
(None is my opinions though)

bagdbmba · Answer

Dude! You did a great job so thanks for this data... Appreciate it's not you view point as an aspirant at least :wink:

If they realize that at least people will not get sandwiched and also have a better chance of doing something outside the intense course... (say, doing real life projects for marketing guys as Marketing Guru Dr.Kotler recently mentioned in a seminar in India...), it'll happen and if they don't ,it won't...

bschooladmit · Answer

thanks for the debrief!

very useful :D

souvik101990 · Answer

Thanks.
If you ever wish to apply to ISB, let me know. I would try to help...

Sent from my GT-I9500 using Tapatalk HD

rango · Answer

yep agree abhij. I guess they believe that the students are sort of hardware where you can put any amount of DATA. My god hw you can take out something while 20 hrs a day you are feeding your brain.

abhattacharyyaIIMC · Answer

It is really nice to hear that Indian management institutes are fulfilling the dreams & desires of students, both local as well as international. It is not only in ISB but you will see this trend in most  top business schools in India .

I think all the  best b schools in India  should create a forum and share their thoughts on improving the management education system as well as increase the percentage of placement year by year.

sok · Answer

It's a pity that all the images are gone

bb · Answer

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