Here is a biiiiiiiiiiiiig post... and entirely borrowed... I was going through some mails alums had written to us and this one caught my eye... now, this is strictly personal but very honest and informed opinion of an alum... just thought it made interesting reading... especially if u intend to attend ISB...

"Hey guys,

I've got one or two emails from worried students asking me whether I really think ISB is a good idea for them. Here are my opinions for those of you who have concerns about coming here (placements details given at end for those who prefer to go straight for the bottom line). The questions you should be asking are:

1. Should I do an MBA?
2. Should I do an MBA at ISB?

1. Should I do an MBA?

My feeling is that an MBA is definitely worth it if you use your time to develop yourself PROACTIVELY (and I really really don't just mean study all day and night - there's been almost no correlation between marks and placements for our batch). If you sit back and just let the year go by then you won't add anything to yourself and your salary going out will be only slightly higher than your salary going in. On the other hand if you really take use of this opportunity, when you start working in a company you will do better than your peers and you will rise to the top faster. That is where the real benefit of an MBA will really kick in. So don't take your starting salary at your job immediately after an MBA as an indication of whether it's been worth it. If at the end an MBA you can sense that you have changed as a person then you've really done well.

2. Should I do an MBA at ISB?

Enough Gyaan. You guys have more practical concerns. Forgive me for meandering for giving you my views on the above. I'm going to compare ISB to US MBAs and the IIMs. At the bottom I'll talk about placements.

Foreign MBAs vs ISB

I think if you want a job abroad or haven't been abroad before then going to a foreign college makes a lot of sense. It costs a lot more but you also have a much better chance of getting an international job and being able to pay it back quickly. For your batch international placements will hopefully be better than they were for our batch but you still cannot be ensured of an international placement at ISB yet (or any other Indian MBA for that matter). Having said that if you do get an international placement then because ISB is a LOT cheaper than any US MBA school your return will be amazing.

I honestly do think that the academic education at ISB is as good if not better than at the Harvard's, Wharton's, etc. Our curriculum was initially designed by Wharton, Kellogg, LBS and the top colleges provide most of our lecturers. We get the best lecturers from each of the best American and European colleges and so our overall quality of course is absolutely top notch. The GMAT average at ISB for your batch should be second highest in the world after Stanford (maybe even the highest) so you will be having an academically pretty bright bunch of people with you and the facilities and infrastructure at ISB is perhaps the best in the world. For those of you who haven't been to the campus - you will fall in love with the place.

If you get into a Top 10 US MBA, INSEAD or LBS you might want to go there for prestige reasons and also the fact that your colleagues will be older and would have achieved more than the students at ISB (average age at ISB around 26 compared to average age of 29 for the US MBAs). Although academically ISB can compare to any of these colleges, the quality of these people in terms of leadership abilities, etc will be higher than the students of ISB on average at the moment (Having said that - I have seen a lot of LBS students and I can tell you that I think ISB is definitely on even footing with the students there at any rate). Although I don't know much about the Asian MBAs my uninformed opinion is that there really isn't much comparison. ISB is miles ahead of those places in terms of student quality and education. Again if you want to get a job in Singapore, Manila etc it may be better going to those places. I would also rate ISB over any of the European MBAs like Oxford, etc.

Overall I think ISB is a better option if you want to settle in India in terms of cost, education, etc. However foreign MBAs are better if you want to give yourself the best chance of working abroad. You will need to stay there for a few years to repay the loans.

ISB vs IIMs

IIM is probably the safer bet if you're interested in Investment Banking. In terms of placements for other things there is very little to choose between them for people with 2 years work experience. Sometimes ISB will appear to have bad placement figures according to certain articles you may read but the profile of ISB is just that most of the students have a large no of work experience and so it just takes them longer to find the right job. The final figures will be fine.

To give you an idea of the age profile - 1% has no experience, 5% has 1 yrs, 15% has 2 yrs, 14% has 3 yrs and the remaining 65% has 4+ yrs. Most of the IIM students are straight out of college or have a limited number of years. That is a big difference between the two.

The IIM MBA has the advantage that the money you have to raise upfront is only around Rs 3Lacs compared to Rs 11Lacs for ISB so if you don't like the idea of taking a loan then an IIM is safer. However the cost over two years is actually the same because although you pay Rs 3 Lacs at an IIM you lose out on an extra year of earnings (average salary at ISB is around Rs 8 Lacs) so the total cost of an IIM is actually Rs 11Lacs as well.

The IIM MBA has the advantage that in a two year course you have more time to really get into the depth of a subject. Although ISB has the same number of lecture hours as a typical 2 year American MBA the time in between lectures is less and you have less time to absorb the data. Sometimes the material flies by you. Again the advantage is that you have one more year in industry so if you start your MBA at the same time as an IIM guy you've already finished and had one year work experience (and hopefully one promotion) before he even starts work. I personally think that you'll learn more from doing an admittedly slightly rushed one year MBA + 1 year work experience compared to a slightly stretched 2 year MBA. Also from alearning point of view if you leverage the knowledge from your fellow experienced students there's a lot to learn from them that you won't get from the younger IIM students.

The ISB education as I said does have the best Profs but this is balanced by the fact that sometimes the syllabus becomes too American based and if you'd like a job in India then that's not the greatest. You might get more ground realities from more India centric cases taught at IIMs.

ISB takes more rounded people after interviewing them, looking at their academics, looking at references, etc. The admissions team is specifically told not to pick people just because they have 750+ on their GMATs and lots of these sorts of students have been rejected. IIMs take people based more on marks and therefore on average their students are probably better at quantitative analysis that the average ISB student. However about 20% of ISB is usually from IIT and about 50% of the batch have Engineering backgrounds so that half of the batch will be just as strong on quants.

I think what tips the scale for me anyway is that ISB has opportunities like exchange programmes with LBS and Kellogg, joint consulting programmes with Wharton. An increasing number of international students (I think there'll be between 5 and 10 for your batch). I also like the idea of being part of a new Indian institution with aspirations of being in the same league as a Harvard or Wharton. This will depend very much on how the founding batch, our batch and your batch represent ISB when we go out in the world. Seeing the college growing up day by day is very exciting.

Placements

There are about 25 students still waiting for an offer out of about 155 (168 students totally but quite a few had their own family businsses). I think ultimately all of them will get offers. There's still time till mid April. So they might bite their nails for a bit longer but I don't think there'll be a serious problem for any of them. People worry too much about jobs when they don't have them but I think they fail to keep things in perspective sometimes. All of them (and all of you) are among the brightest people in the world. They have a proven track record of achievement and if they don't get a job on the first day of the placement season it's not the end of the world. Most people get the best jobs at the end of the placement season. People at the beginning take the safe jobs HLL trainee postions for example. Then at the end you'll get random small companies you've never heard of looking for an MBA to head their new business development project and the people who have no offers and are biting their nails will suddenly get an amazing salary and exciting work. The most important thing is to stay optimistic because when you see everyone else getting a job your self confidence suffers and this translates into nervousness in interviews. If you just believe that you'll be ok - you'll get what want. I swear that optimism is the most important thing at an MBA.

The average Indian salary (excluding any foreign salaries that would skew the figure upwards) is around Rs 8 Lacs.

Most people between 0-3 years (excluding CA articleship) get salaries between Rs 6Lacs and Rs 7Lacs. You get a few that are slightly below (TCS for example may offer around Rs 5 Lacs to some people or even a little below for MT positions but people will take it because TCS often gives foreign postings and you can quickly earn dollar salaries) . On the other hand you get a few that are a lot more. One of my flatmates (24 yrs) got HSBC Investment Banking in London ($60k approx) and the girl who lives above me (Also around 23-24) got an offer of around $100,000 with a pharma company. The lowest offers would be for some MT positions of around Rs 4.5 Lacs, which are unlikely to be accepted but may be if the company offers growth opportunities, international prospects, etc.

People between 3-4.5 years get between Rs 7Lacs and Rs 10Lacs.
People between 5-6 years get between Rs 10 Lacs and Rs 13Lacs.
People with 6+ will get between Rs 10 Lacs and Rs 15+ Lacs. Really depends on the quality of your background

Please take these as rough guides. As you can imagine there will be people who fall out of these ranges by a Lac or two. I'm just trying to give you a feel. You're not a statistic. Ultimately what you will get will depend on your specifics.

I have opinions from around 49 people as to their salary increases post MBA here. 5 got less than they did before. 12 got less than a 30% increase. 9 got between a 30% and 50% increase. 14 got a 50% to 100% increse and 9 more than doubled their salary. Use these figures really carefully. Remember that if a person was only earning a Rs 3Lac salary before then doubling salary would mean earning a Rs 6Lac salary. A person earning Rs10Lac is unlikely to double his salary to Rs 20Lacs. Also like I said do not worry if you think you are going to take a pay cut in the immediate term. I think you'll find that over the next few years after your MBA your salary will rise much faster than it would have without the MBA as you prove yourself at work.

Placements are still underway but I think they will be fairly good overall when we finish.

The investment banking jobs is the one area that hasn't been great this year with just a handful of offers and that's why I'd like to just speak a little longer on this area. The main reason for this is that the entire industry has suffered from a downturn in the last couple of years particularly in investment banking. Now when an investment bank takes 5 people instead of the usual 15 people it doesn't see the point in going to a campus it hasn't visited before. That's why ISB hasn't been able to get that many great International investment banks here this year. However ISB does have contacts with banks like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros and they are most likely to come for your batch. It just takes one good year where they are recruiting for the relationships with ISB to build up and for them to become regulars. But having said that I think if a person is really interested in Investment banking then IIM-A is a safer bet this year I feel (I would like to point out that several companies who have not gone to IIMs have come to ISB as well - a good example is Novartis International which only recruits from 5 campuses in the world - Harvard, Wharton, etc). The other areas of banking have been fine with lots of people being taken into retail banking especially. Switching to finance is not impossible but was tough this year. There were a number of people who were able to make that switch without really aiming for it. There were also several others who really wanted to but couldn't. I think if you really want to and you read up throughout the year on the industry and are reasonably articulate in interviews then you have a decent chance.

A list of companies in alphabetical order who have come to campus this year so far includes: ABN AMRO, American Express, Anand Group, Asian Paints, Asian PPG, AstraZenaca International, Bahwan International, BCG, Bharti, Byrraju Foundation, Castrol, Citibank, Coke, Cognizant, Colgate, DRL, DSL Software, GE Capital, GE, Godrej, HCL, HDFC, Hero Honda, HLL, HSBC International, Hunt Partners, ICICI, ICICI Pru, iGate International, ING Investment, Infosys, Ispat International, ITC Infotech, ITC, Kotak, Lafarge, Mahindra Telecom, Mahindra Holidays, Marico, McKinsey, Microsoft, MPhasis, Nipuna, NIIT, Novartis International, Olam, Patni, Prudential ICICI Asset management, Ramco, Reliance Petroleum, Roulac, Satyam, Shaw Wallace, Smithkline Beecham, SRF Ltd Switz Inc, Symphony, TCS, TSMG, Tata teleservices, Techspan, vCustomer, Virtusa, Wipro technologies, Wipro Infotech, etc. This list is a few days old and since we are midway in our process will keep growing.

There are several companies that are scheduled to come but I couldn't be bothered to find out the entire schedule just now (sorry 2:53am-need sleep). In addition to the companies already scheduled the following companies are still being chased up to come to campus: BNP Paribas, Trinity, Dell, Swatch, Levi, Britannia, Accenture, Ford, Sapient, Aviva, UB, Volvo, Stern Stewart, Hutch, Adobe, Edelweiss Capital, Reliance Infocomm, Toyota, Oracle, Chubb, Avendus, CRISIL, IBM, Kanbay, AIG, Intel, ISEC, and several others. In addition to all these companies several people with greater than 4 years work experience are being helped to find specific jobs for them with specific companies through consultants. This is simply because it is harder to find roles that suit people with many years work experience and more tailored searches are required.

Hope this helps those of you still making up your minds one way or another. Once again I would like to add that you can get caught up in a whole bunch of worries about costs and loans and placements, etc. If you come here with the right attitude - to proactively develop yourself and retain your optimism throughout - you will not regret it. Leaving my job in London (despite having got a first round interview with McKinsey and final round with CSFB waiting) ISB was one of the best decisions I made. So in one word my advice would be - Come! :)"