Do IITians have an easier time getting into IIMs?

Lot of IIT-ians get through to IIM each year. Surely, this must be the game is rigged in favour of IIT-ians? The IIMs must surely have some mechanism to give IIT-ians an easy entry path? 

The answer to both these questions is 'No'. Since there is no joy in taking a linear path towards answers, let us look at a comic strip first. This one from xkcd is fabulous.

Consider this - there is a group of n people who have cleared an exam arguably tougher than CAT. This group of n people also take CAT. Odds are that a number of people from within this group of 'n' people also do well in CAT. What we see here is a correlation, not causality. 

If anything, it might be tougher for IIT-ians to get into the IIMs than the other way around.  

Being one among the top 3% of IITians taking the exam is probably more difficult than being in the top 0.3 percent of people in the general category!

Quite a few of my IIM classmates were very smart people. And with absolutely no disrespect to them, I can say, on an average, the IIT classmates I had were smarter than the IIM classmates that I had. 

To get straight to the point, this story of IIM being rigged in favour of IIT-ians is humbug. Very much like the story that it is difficult to get in if you are an engineer (More than 85% of entrants into IIM A, B or C are engineers). These are statements that people like to tell themselves in order to believe that the game is rigged against them. 

The CAT paper does not give a huge advantage to engineers, the admission process is not built to favour IIT-ians, the overall selection process does not discriminate against engineers. So, whether you are an engineer or not, whether you are from IIT or not, there is a decent chance of proving your worth through this exam. 

The preparation process and forums offer a great array of delusions to pick from; so that each person with can pick and choose one and believe that the game is rigged against them. Do not believe any stories that say merit gets bypassed in the selection process. 

Notwithstanding the evidence presented by IIM graduates worldwide, the selection process, by and large, is merit-driven.

Top B-Schools and other related questions

This is the time when we get to hear a lot of questions on how to apply, where to apply, which exams to write, etc.

Let us start with B-school rankings. Like all the best rankings, we have come up with our own way of handling this. Unlike the best rankings, we have not conducted a survey to create some data to validate what we wanted to put anyway. If you want a really phony survey, refer to the outlook one. If you want a reasonable honest decent one, the pagalguy one is good. If you want a survey that does not even want to pretend to be anything but an advertising campaign, look for anything with IIPM top 10 in it.

Anyway, on to our own list. We have just categorized the colleges into three tiers.

Tier I
Based on CAT: IIMs A, B, C, L, I, K, SPJain, MDI, NITIE, Bajaj
Based on XAT: XLRI
Other: ISB, FMS,

Tier II
Based on CAT: IIMS - Ranchi, Rohtak, Raipur, Trichy, etc. Symbioisis SIBM, NMIMS, IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, TISS, TAPMI, IIT Kanpur,
Based on XAT: XIMB
Other: SCMHRD,

Tier III
Based on XAT: KJ Somaiyya, Goa Institute of Management, XIME, LIBA
Other: Great Lakes, Other Symbioses. BIM, etc.

Needless to say, this list is indicative and highly subjective. This is not much more than a starting point for students to do research.

Exams to write
Anyone interested in MBA should definitely take up CAT, XAT and FMS. Other exams to consider are SNAP, MICAT and any regional exams. JMET is no longer included because entry into the IITs is going to be through the CAT from this year onwards.

How to choose elective/specialization
To start with, there is no hard and fast specialization in most MBAs. A degree in MBA-Finance is not like a BE Civil engineering degree. A student can specialize in finance and/or marketing or neither and still get a job in P&G or ICICI. Thumb rule while applying to companies is this - If you are applying to P&G call yourself a marketing guy, if you are applying to Goldman Sachs call yourself a fin guy. So, do not worry about specialization till you join college. You wont have to worry about this till you start your second year if you are doing a two-year course.

Which college is best for marketing/fin/HR, etc?
Specialization brands have not yet come up in India (They are not such a big deal globally either). Go for the better college, do not sweat over specialization. The only colleges known for something different are
XLRI- HR
NITIE - Ops
MICA - Advertising

And even these are not too clearly defined.

Best wishes for the entrance exam season

Admissions into IIMs - How important is work experience in getting an admit?

There are many versions of this key question. How do the IIMs rate work experience? How much does it count for? All other things being equal, will the IIMs always prefer experienced grads? How much more should fresh graduates score in order to stand a chance?

Like many of the research reports, let me start with a disclaimer. I do not claim to have any inside knowledge on how the IIMs process applicants, and most of what I have to say is based on anecdotal evidence.

There is no objective normalization process for accounting for experience

The IIMs most likely do not have a scoring system for awarding points for work experience. It is my belief that the selection committee goes in with an idea of how they want the batch to be structured and conducts interviews with this backdrop.

As in, IIM Bangalore might say tell the selection panel, we would like to have around 60-80 fresh grads, 60-80 grads with 1-2 years experience and around 50-60 grads with more experience than that. Based on this, we have called 300 freshers, 300 1-2 years' experienced grads and 200 very experienced candidates for the interview.

So, after this kind of plan is made, effectively, the groups are more or less competing within each other, and therefore there is no way someone can make a statement like "if you have 4 years experience, you can get in with a score that is 1 percentile point lower than someone with 0 years experience". It is quiet likely that the mean and median score of shortlisted fresh graduates is higher than that of heavily experienced candidates, and this is what we mean by saying that experience counts for something.

Does 1-2 years experience count for much?

Not really. The guys with less than 24 months of experience constitute a high proportion of any batch, and any experience less than 24 months rarely counts for much. These candidates are unlikely to have picked up any great understanding of either their industry or organizational dynamics to make a huge impact.

Does the type of experience count?

All B-schools price diversity (some more so than others), so a different profile always counts for something. A lawyer/ doctor always has an edge over a software professional in our country. There is little doubt about this.

Will the IIMs shift towards more experienced candidates

With a shift to round-the-year exam to be conducted by an external agency, the IIMs will inevitably begin to value profile and experience more. So, this trend is likely to happen

Will the IIMs shun fresh graduates?

Extremely unlikely. No matter which position an institute holds, it will be keen on attracting the best talent available. So, if one IIM shifts towards picking only experienced candidates, then it will effectively lose out on fresh talent. As a talent pool, the fresh graduates compete favourably against other groups. Among the top 10 of any graduating class, one would usually find more than 70% of candidates with 0-2 years experience, with perhaps up o 40% being fresh graduates. There is limited statistical evidence to suggest that fresh graduates do not get value from an MBA. A large number of companies prefer to recruit fresh grads for internships and prefer to select fresh grads for entry-level positions. So, any one IIM, if it chooses to change its profile will end up losing out on talent. So, unless there is a concerted effort from the top 20 B-schools in India, the dynamics cannot change overnight.

I think India will slowly shift towards taking in more experienced candidates into their B-Schools. But this shift will be slow and more or less synchronised across institutes.

Will personal interview and GD be more difficult for fresh graduates?

The short answer is Yes. Fresh graduates have less to talk about themselves, less personal experiences to count on and refer to, will likely have had few opportunities to make presentations to anyone and are generally a little raw. Experienced candidates are naturally better-equipped to handle one-on-one sessions and group discussions. This is why fresh graduates should spend more time preparing themselves for GD-PI and should focus on presenting their case well.

Bottom-line

If you are a fresh graduate, do not let this talk of experienced candidates standing a huge advantage get to you. You are effectively competing against fellow fresh grads for the seats and in any case, you have likely done better than an average experienced candidate in the CAT exam and that should count for something.

If you have 1-2 years of experience, this is not a game-changer, so make sure you have enough talking points about your job.