The way we did it

India's economy is firing on all its cylinders again, and qualified hands are needed in the boiler room. Recruiters are back in droves on business school campuses to pick graduates by the hundreds, if not the thousands. Still, the mood is wary among students and mid-career managers weighing an executive diploma programme to boost their marketability.

There is good reason for the caution. Last year's graduating class across the country, except perhaps from the storied Indian Institutes of Management, was badly mauled in the job market. Most newly-minted managers had to settle for salary packages much worse than they had dreamed of.

The question uppermost in the minds of those aspiring to be part of India's MBA Class of 2013, in other words those taking the Common Aptitude Test or other entrance examinations to B-schools later this year, is whether an MBA is worth the few lakhs of rupees it costs and the two years it takes.

New Dimensions BT-Nielsen expands scale and scope in its eighth edition BIGGER SAMPLE SIZE: Polled 1,449 stakeholders. Last year, the survey had 596 respondents WIDER FOOTPRINT: Added Chandigarh, taking the number of cities covered to 13. The dozen scoped last year were: New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Lucknow, rest of the National Capital Region (Noida, Gurgaon and Ghaziabad), Ahmedabad, Pune, Indore, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Coimbatore NEW STAKEHOLDER CATEGORY: Included trainers from MBA coaching institutes - among the biggest influencers - for the first time FIRST-TIME QUALITATIVE TAKE: Deployed a Nielsen online tool 'BuzzMetrics' to capture what MBA stakeholders are discussing online (See Business of Chatter). This does not influence the survey findings but does tell you which schools are in the buzz

What does Business Today's annual business school survey, the most-read in the country, look to do in this situation? Simply put, we decided to make our gold-standard survey even more rigorous, robust, and indispensable by dramatically expanding its scale and scope. Business Today and Nielsen surveyed 1,449 people (nearly two and a half times the sample size last year), added a new category of respondents, broadened the geographical spread of the face-to-face research, and covered more B-schools - 50 compared with 30 last year - to bring you richer findings backed by deeper data.

Business Today pioneered the B-school survey in 1998, and this is the place for an important reminder about what makes the BT-Nielsen survey better than the dozens of print and television imitations flattering it: this is a perception survey. It captures what respondents think about B-schools based on the information they have and their own experience. Our survey does not teeter on the more questionable "factual" data on infrastructure, average salaries, or the total number of campus placements while arriving at the rankings.

Those figures are susceptible to overstatement by the participating colleges and there are no absolutely credible bases to validate them. We did not seek the participation of the business schools, nor did we restrict the survey to a limited number of colleges that might deign to take part.

The Personal Preference Influence

INSTITUTE	ACTUAL RANK	PERSONAL PREFERENCE	INSTITUTE	ACTUAL RANK	PERSONAL PREFERENCE
IIM-A	1	1	DMS-IIT Delhi	16	19
IIM-B	2	2	DMS-IIT Roorkee	17	24
IIM-C	3	3	K. J. Somaiya-Mumbai	18	16
FMS Delhi	4	5	SPJIMR Mumbai	19	31
IIM-L	5	4	IMT Ghaziabad	20	29
XLRI Jamshedpur	6	11	BIMTECH Delhi	21	13
ISB Hyderabad	7	10	ICFAI-Mumbai	22	14
IIM-I	8	6	NMIMS Mumbai	23	23
LIBA Chennai	9	7	MDI Gurgaon	24	42
ICFAI Hyderabad	10	9	DMS-IIT Kanpur	25	32
IIFT Delhi	11	8	BIM-Tiruchirapalli	26	12
IIM-K	12	30	ABS Noida	27	17
SIBM Pune	13	15	CCIM Bangalore	28	20
JBIMS Mumbai	14	18	Prin. L.N. WIM-Mumbai	29	21
IIM-S	15	36	Nirma-Ahmedabad	30	27

Our methodology, honed and sharpened over the past eight years, broke up respondents into six categories: MBA Aspirants, Current MBAs (or B-school students), Young Executives, HR Heads, Functional Heads and a new and important group added this year, the Trainers. The first group consists of "potential customers" of B-schools and reflects what they look for in an MBA programme. We ensured a mix of MBA aspirants with and without work experience. Of the 282 MBA aspirants, 87 had work experience and 195 did not.

Current MBAs consisted of 183 final-year students and 101 first-year students from reputed B-schools. Nielsen teams also questioned 226 executives with fewer than three years of work experience. The 229 functional heads were polled for their experienced views on the effectiveness of a B-school education, as were 234 HR managers from India Inc. who have been fishing in the expanding pool of business graduates over the past three years. We brought in the last group of 194 trainers - typically administrators and teachers at B-school coaching institutes - as they have a big influence on the admission choices students make.

Get, Set, Go...
The BT-Nielsen survey this year was conducted in one sustained period of time, unlike previous years when the study was spread over two phases. Teams from Business Today and Nielsen started by shortlisting the top 60 colleges based on our rankings from past years, data research and other published sources. With the widening array of colleges that MBA aspirants and recruiters choose from, we expanded our rankings list to 50.

The rankings were based on the Brand Equity Index (BEI) scores constructed using the Winning Brands proprietary Nielsen tool. The scores were based on questions built around various B-school attributes classified into Reputation, Placements, Quality of Placements, Infrastructure, Faculty, Specialised Units, Teaching Methodology and Admissions Eligibility (see Classification of Attributes). Each of these eight attributes was further broken up into sub-attributes such as the difficulty of admission tests and the student-faculty ratio.

Classification of Attributes Reputation High ranking institute Thorough subject knowledge Tough admission exams Alumni achievements International recognition Tie-up with foreign institute Offers great internship opportunities Infrastructure High speed Internet connectivity Excellent library, computer labs Enables financial aid Convenient location High standard hostel & mess facility Success of Placement 100% placement Multiple placement options Faculty High quality research papers Visiting profs-industry captains Well-trained faculty Specialist Units Specialised programmes/curricula (can be in any stream like Marketing/HR/Finance/ Operation/Mass Media/IT) Quality of Placement Average salary best in the industry Placement abroad & in MNCs Teaching Methodology Student-faculty ratio Excellent teaching methods Good industry exposure Admission Eligibility Prefer students with work experience Admission to engineers only

The Winning Brands model can be used to measure the health of brands across practically any category, and is focused on understanding the key drivers of any choice. Taking into consideration parameters like the favourite B-schools, recommended B-schools and the price premium commanded by a brand, the model calculates the BEI based on multi-variate analysis. The index scores form the firm foundation for the B-school rankings. The higher the BEI score of a B-school, the more attractive it is to its stakeholders and therefore the higher its ranking will be.

Based on the scores, B-schools were categorised as a Monopoly Brand (with a score between 4 and 6), Winning Brand (between 3 and 4), Distinct Brand (between 2 and 3), Undifferentiated Brand (between 1 and 2) and Others (lower than 1). This year, we also introduced a minor addition: we asked respondents to rank schools from the set of 60 on our shortlist.

The people Nielsen polled were asked to answer the question "Which do you think the best B-school is?" We then grouped such choices in descending order of votes received and arrived at a more subjective "personal B-school preference". There is a subtle distinction here: while the BEI captures the strength of a particular B-school brand, the straight-off answer captures personal preference.

For example, a student might rate IIM Ahmedabad the highest with her index score. But if she knows that her competence, or her ability to relocate, or her inability to finance an expensive graduate programme might not gain her admission into that school or any of its peers where competition is intense, she might consider a tier-II or tier-III B-school as top of her preferred list. In our ranking (see page 38), this dichotomy becomes evident in the case of IIM Kozhikode, which is listed No. 12 by Nielsen's BEI but No. 30 in order of personal preference.

IIM Shillong (No. 15 vs No. 36) or Management Development Institute, Gurgaon (No. 24 vs No 42) are other examples. On the other hand, some colleges do much better on the personal scale than on the BEI rankings, for instance, Birla Institute of Management Technology, Delhi, which had an index score of 21 but a higher personal preference rank of 13, Bharathidasan Institute of Management, Tiruchirapalli (No. 26 vs No. 12) and Amity Business School, Noida (No. 27 vs No. 17).

The BT-Nielsen B-school rankings are always much anticipated and much discussed. They carry weight with our audience because they are fair, comprehensive, dispassionate and unbiased. The rankings constitute our most prestigious study. Inevitably, they excite delight among the new stars on the firmament, or the comets that have flashed back into the sky; or they draw criticism from those whose lights have dipped below the horizon. Either way, dear reader, we welcome your feedback and participation.