Placement matter. That's why this edition of the BT-Cosmode survey assigns maximum importance to market-oriented parameters

A school is only as good as its next batch. That market-orientation is the cornerstone of the third edition of the BT-Cosmode survey of the best business schools in India. Parameters such as the average salary, the number of recruiters, and the recruiter-profile have traditionally formed part of the BT-Cosmode exercise; this year, Business Today and Cosmode decided to increase the importance assigned to them. The 2002 survey, then, is far more market-oriented than its previous avatars were.

Internal capability, that bugbear of schools that don't invest in infrastructure, wasn't ignored either: it and market performance were assigned an equal weightage and constituted the only two broad parameters considered in the exercise. Indeed, after Cosmode completed its survey and analysis and ranked the business schools in association with an expert panel, BT discovered that the evaluation of the market performance of the schools had not been assigned a weightage in consonance with its importance. Therefore, its weightage was increased from 40 per cent to 50 per cent.

The survey was conducted online and offline. Schools were invited to participate in the survey through snail mail, and, given its unreliability, advertisements in Business Today. There may be close to 1,000 B-schools in India but only 138 agreed to participate in the study. Notable absentees include Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi, and xlri. Of the 138, 115 met the base criteria of having graduated at least one batch and provided complete information. The list of the 100 best B-schools in India was derived from this.

The specifics taken into consideration under each parameter were placements, industry interface and alumni activity for the market performance score (placements were accorded the maximum weightage) and intellectual capital, process efficiency, and infrastructure for the internal capability score.

The assignation of equal importance to market performance and internal capability works: the first is a rough-and-ready measure of how good a school is right now; the second, is a far more scientific measure of a school's capability to produce good MBAs in the future. Qualitative and perceptual data were not taken into account.

Apart from the top 100 ranking, Business Today and Cosmode have provided smaller rankings across parameters and zones (North, South, West, and East & Central combined).

The survey was designed and conducted by a Cosmode team comprising Kalpana Sinha, Manish Saxena and Vrinda Ramachandran. Back-office assistance was provided by L.P. Christian, Ashutosh and Tanish. The data provided by the schools were validated by six teams led by M.P. Sinha (Delhi), Prathima Vardan (Bangalore), A.S. Prasad (Lucknow), Biswajit Ghosal (Bhubaneswar), Padma Sinha (Mumbai) and P.V.R. Murthy (Chennai). The validating teams visited close to 60 per cent of the schools surveyed. The parameters, validated and corrected by the teams, were incorporated in the final analysis.

Here, without further ado, are the rankings. Now, go on, hit us.

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