Business School Rankings and Specializations

It is really necessary to do good home work on the buisness school you want to get into after you decide to join a business School.I know I am repeating this. it is not only expensive but an investment too. So you really need to zero in on the school you want to attend. There are humpty number of ratings available to confuse us. Business week has been doing a pretty good job of putting together the ratings of different categories of programs like under grad, grad, executive . Go to the Business week site and search for MBA progam ratings. You can see all different types of programs. For each program the ratings are done in groups. You can look at all the  business school rankings. When you click on the school you wll get all the details like - the faculty strength, number of majors,, mean years of experince, the number of applications, acceptance rate and so on. The rounds for admissions and the dead lines. In India they dont' have rounds. You have to appear for CAT(Usually on third sunday of Novmber, now available on on line too) and follow from there to join in june of the next year.The GMAT scores at University of Chicago, bus school were in 660-760 range, at Harvard it was 670-760 with a mean of 719.Chicago program is 21 months and Harvard is 18 monhs. The months of experience at Chiago was 36-58. Direct costs at Chiago were $101,013. Both Non resident and resident was same. At Harvard the direct cost were $106,880 In a place like Arizona State the direct costs were $38,,390 and non-resident was $65,320.Please remember direct costs are only for the school tuition and related expenses. Living expenses are not included. To know what it might cost in total, that is inclusive of living expenses estimate you should look at the annual budgets. The IIMs in India would cost around 9-12 lakhs for Indians living in India. The fee structure varies from IIM to IIM so you need to see for each IIM. These being under Ministry of Human Resources, Government of India, are less expensive but the rate of admission being very low it is hard to get in. Private schools cost more. For Indian NRIs and foreign students the fee structure is different.

The first year of the program is very exam oriented. You get a baisc exposure to all the buisiness subjects like marketing, finance, Operations managment, Human resource development management and so on. It is in the second year you acutally take more courses in one or two disciplines. As I had mentioned earlier Marketing and Finance are the most popular specializations as large percentage of job offers come from these two areas in the final placement based on  the business school ranking.  

Ofcourse, these are not so rigid that one cannot move from one to the other in employment. However, if you want to be in marketing, you must be sure that you are interested in it. Sales Jobs can be pretty demanding and high earning too. If you enjoy meeting people and possess skills like very good communication, making contacts and relationships, can work odd hours, enjoy travelling and can take "NO" for an answer when you go to sell, sure it is the right job for you. It is good to have some good experince in selling so you understand your customers and territory even when you move up. Marketing specialization gets you jobs in service sectors like banks, hotels, tourism companies, media, IT Telecom,and Energy sectors. You also get jobs in manufacturing sectors like the Fast moving consumer goods(FMCG) companies, consumer durables,engineering companies , electronics and so on.

Finance is good for you if you are very comfortable with numbers, analysis and you are desk oriented person. Banks, investment banking, credit rating agencies, derivatives and trading firms, broking and asset management are some places where you can find jobs.

You can specialize in Human resource Management too. This puts into jobs related to personnel managment, recruitment, selction, training and development,man power planning, learn ing centres and so on.

You need to be sure that you are specializing because you like the discipline. Not because you want to avoid some other subject. For example, don't take marketing because you want to avoid finance which has lot of number crunching and you you dont like that.

There are some new specializations now like energy and power and environment, Similarly some very focussed programs like Hospital Mangement and Retail Management are also available. While this gives good specific exposure to this sector it can narrow your scope. This is something worth keeping in mind.

Well if you are not into a Business school yet may be it is bit early to think about all this, but it also helps to know how a school is placed with respect to a specialization before we get fixed on it. For example, I think North Western is good for Marketing, Harvrad for General management and Chicago for OR. I would not skip North Western for Harvard if I am keen on being a Marketing guy. So business school ranking is only one consideration but the strength in specialization also is important 

Ultimately you are the best judge of what you like and what is right for you and identify the right match for you based on business school rankings 

More later on adapting to Business schools, the ethical and moral expectations. All the best to you, your children or grand children for who ever you are reading this. I would love to have a grandma that can advise me on buseiness school rankings. Come to India it is a fun place. Take a course if you are a student, it is a growing market and watch the crazy Indian students go bizark in the classes.Thanks for reading this.

related links:

http://hubpages.com/hub/Business-schools-do-they-have-different-environment

http://hubpages.com/hub/Start-getting-ready-for-busschool

http://hubpages.com/hub/RamKKasturis-Busienss-administration-is-to-for-me