ISB beats IIMs, top-ranked Indian B-school on Financial Times MBA Rankings

Indian School of Business (ISB) has retained its position as the top ranked Indian B-school for its one year executive post graduate programme (EPGP) in the Financial Times Global MBA 2018 Rankings.

While the institute fell one place to rank at 28th position, as against 27th position in the rankings last year, ISB saw itself among top five globally in terms of percentage salary increase and placement three months after graduation.

The FT Global MBA Rankings, which ranks 100 top global one-year and two-year post graduate programmes for candidates with prior work experience, surveyed around 155 B-schools for the same.

Of the top 100 B-schools globally ranked for their MBA programmes, only four Indian institutes were ranked including ISB, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A), IIM Bangalore (IIM-B) and IIM Calcutta (IIM-C) for their post graduate programmes for executives.

Among these, while IIM-A's post graduate programme for executives (PGPX) fell two places from being ranked at 29th position last year to 31st position this year, IIM-B and IIM-C's programmes jumped 14 and 17 places to be ranked at 35 and 78, respectively.

Apart from being among the top five globally in terms of percentage salary increase and placement three months after graduation, ISB continues to make progress in in alumni recommendation, weighted salary, percentage of aims achieved and placement success.

"Our research ranking clearly puts us at the top of the Indian b-schools in terms of our investment in faculty and research and corresponding research output. Because research rankings depend on total versus per capita research productivity, we will improve as we attract more resident faculty. We will continue to focus on providing world class education while steadfastly investing in our faculty, research centres and institutes. ISB will continue to proactively partner with government and industry to drive performance and to contribute to society at large," said Rajendra Srivastava, Dean, ISB, adding that the institute has over 8600 alumni across 42 countries.

According to Sourav Mukherji, Dean of Academic Programmes at IIM Bangalore, the premier B-school said that efforts in improving student learning experience led to a positive impact on ranking.

"We have constantly tried to improve the learning experience of students in the programme even while keeping an eye on their career aspirations. At IIM-B, we have strengthened our career development services to specifically understand how our students can realize their professional goals. We are glad that all these efforts are showing positive impact on the rankings, while being aware that there is room for further improvement," said Mukherji.

Commenting on the institute's performance, Errol D'Souza, director-in-charge, IIM Ahmedabad said, "The market for management education has become crowded and extremely competitive and we are pleased to be continually ranked amongst the top 1 per cent of schools. We have moved down a notch in the ranking this year and though this is marginal it will energize us to do better."

Given that FT surveys alumni three years after graduation, the programmes need to be four years old. For schools to enter the ranking calculations, FT requires that a minimum of 20 per cent of alumni reply to the survey, with at least 20 fully completed responses.

The ranking assigns weights to criteria such as current salary of alumni, average salary increase before the programme and three years after, career progress, female and international faculty, and female and international students, among others.

Indian B-schools in FT Global MBA Rankings 2018

2018 2017 Change

ISB 28 27 -1

IIM-A 31 29 -2

IIM-B 35 49 14

IIM-C 78 95 17

Source: FT