[ultra lord]

With the Common Entrance Test (CET) around the corner, we focus on Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS), Mumbai. In an exclusive interview with PaGaLGuY.com, JBIMS Director Dr Chandrahauns Chavan plays up the importance of alumni and faculty over the institute infrastructure and highlights being located in the heart of India's financial capital as a USP.

What makes JBIMS different from other B-schools?

JBIMS is located in the heart of the business district of India’s financial capital Mumbai. The institute enjoys invaluable advantages because of its location. Week after week we have leading corporate personalities coming down to campus for guest lectures. Such a high level of corporate interaction keeps our students abreast of the latest business trends and helps them to hit the ground running when they start their careers as young managers.

JBIMS also has a very large number of visiting faculties. Many of our faculty is practicing managers. This helps students gain exposure to contemporary industry practices and develop an in depth understanding of how management concepts explained in the classroom are applied in industry.

A striking feature about JBIMS is the level of autonomy that students enjoy. Student committees handle most activities on campus including placements. Besides students also handle the media relations, alumni interaction and meets, events like business fests, and also maintain the entire IT infrastructure of the institute.

What is the JBIMS cut off score for CET? Are you looking at changing the CET pattern in anyway? What can an applicant expect from this years Admission test?

JBIMS does not have any pre-fixed CET cut off score. The top rankers in the CET and GD/PI are admitted to the institute. The CET is designed by the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE), Maharashtra. As always the test would be very challenging and evaluate the aptitude of the candidates in areas like verbal, quantitative and logical ability.

Applicants would have to focus on increasing accuracy and speed both as the CET would also test time management skills as well as decision-making ability under pressure.

Why is the GD/PI given lesser amount of importance as compared to the written test? What are the qualities one looks at while marking applicants during the GD/PI?

JBIMS being the university Department of Mumbai University is bound by the admission norms drafted by the DTE. It is true that GD/PI accounts for about 20% of the aggregate score. However, because of the immense competition (only 120 out of more than 45,000 applicants are admitted to JBIMS) what is ensured is that only the best performers in both GD/PI and CET make it to JBIMS. A look at the scores of students who make it to JBIMS would reveal that all have excellent scores in GD/PI. Therefore it would be unfair to say that GD/PI has less importance. A candidate needs to perform well at the GD/PI to make it to JBIMS.

Qualities that we look for during GD/PI are clarity of thought, communication skills, erudition in the field of graduation, general awareness, ability to gel with a group and presence of mind. GD/PI is also an opportunity for us to judge the quality of the candidate’s work experience (if any) and maturity.

Can you share some information regarding the batch profile of students in terms of gender, previous education background and work experience? Does JBIMS prefer any profiles of educational background and work experience to others?

In the Batch of 2007, 50 pc of the students have less than 6 months or no work experience. About 15 pc of the batch has more than two years of work experience. 70 pc of the students in this batch are engineers. The rest of the batch comprises graduates from commerce, arts, pure sciences and management.
The Batch of 2008 is highly skewed towards experienced students with almost 80 pc of the batch having significant prior work experience. Majority of the students are engineers, but there is a lot of diversity with students from medicine, arts and commerce disciplines as well.

There is no mandate for the institute to select candidates with work experience or from a particular educational background. We are open to all candidates. However if candidates have significant work experience, which adds value to their candidature, then it can work in their favor.

Could you briefly explain the mentorship programme at JBIMS? Besides academics what activities do JBIMS students get involved in?
JBIMS has a student buddy system and a corporate mentorship program. Student buddies from the senior batch are assigned to each student of the junior batch from the beginning of the academic year. Student buddies help juniors adjust to the rigors of B-school life and provide assistance with academics and project work.

In the corporate mentorship program every student is assigned a corporate mentor by our alumni volunteer to become mentors to our students based on the expertise of the mentor and the career goals of the students. Students can have informal one to one interactions with their mentors. Corporate mentors provide invaluable guidance in aspects relating to career choices, choices of specialization, summer placements and final placements.

The institute hosts a plethora of Extra Curricular Activities, which adds to the overall development of our students. Strategym, our annual business convention, provides a platform to our students to research contemporary industry issues and provide innovative solutions to problems that plague industry. The event has heavy corporate participation. Most of the research work presented at Strategym is carried out as consulting assignments for companies and is also adopted by companies in their day-to-day operations.

Prayaag is our annual B-school cum corporate extravaganza and includes various events like quizzes, business plan competitions, management simulation and strategy games.
Our Entrepreneurship Cell (E-cell) regularly organizes entrepreneurship games and workshops. It also provides opportunities for students to work with NGOs and carry out consulting work for SMEs.

A series of online quizzes is held during the course of the academic year. JBIMS also has very active Finance and Marketing clubs which help students put management concepts into practice.

Coming to placements, what is the placement process followed at JBIMS? What are the kinds of jobs, students at JBIMS have been taking up in the past three years?

Placement season begins with companies coming to campus for pre placement talks. This helps students assess opportunities for growth, job profiles and the remuneration offered. It also gives students the chance to interact with employees of the company and learn more about the work culture. Based on this assessment companies are ranked by the batch through a democratic voting process. This ranking/slotting determines the order in which companies visit campus for recruitment.

Over the last few years JBIMS has proved to be a happy hunting ground for consulting majors. Students have been taking up offers in companies like Mckinsey, Accenture, TSMG, KPMG, and Ernst & Young. Traditionally, JBIMS has been a favorite of banks and FMCGs. Our regular recruiters include Citibank, HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, ICICI, HLL, ITC, Colgate Palmolive and Coca Cola to name a few.

JBIMS infrastructure needs a lot of work and restructuring. What is your take on it? What are doing to compete with other Indian B-schools?

Infrastructure at JBIMS is improving. The institute went wi-fi in 2006. The computer centre is equipped with Pentium based workstations with the latest statistical and analytical packages, project management and business environment simulation software. We already have a state of the art 150 seater -auditorium named after our founding Director Dr. K. S. Basu. Our library, which is equipped with over 40,000 books, thousands of theses, and over a hundred foreign and domestic journals is, considered amongst the best in Asia and is regularly visited by distinguished corporates including alumni.

While infrastructure does have a role to play in any B-school, over the years the strength of JBIMS has been the high quality of its students and faculty. Despite the limited infrastructure vis a vis other institutes, JBIMS has produced industry stalwarts like Mr. Harish Manwani, Ms. Chanda Kochchar, Mr. Uday Kotak, Ms. Lalita Gupte to name a few.

Could you explain the quota system, which is the part of the CET admission procedure? Are students looked at differently depending on the state to which they belong? Do you feel a difference in quality of students because of this system?

As per DTE rules JBIMS has 70 pc of seats allocated for students graduating from Mumbai University, 15 pc allocation for students from other universities in Maharashtra and 15 pc for Outside Maharashtra students (OMS).

Maharashtra students have to take the CET. OMS students may apply to JBIMS on the basis of their scores in CET or other tests, which include CAT/XAT/JMET/ATMA/MAT.
Besides this difference, the rest of the admission procedure remains same for all candidates. Candidates from different states are not looked at or evaluated differently. This system ensures that we get a good mix of the best students from Maharashtra and outside Maharashtra.

Does JBIMS plan to introduce the PGDBM course along with the MMS? Also are there any plans to introduce part time courses at JBIMS?

The full time MMS course has been the flagship course of JBIMS. On the executive management education front we already have 3 years part-time Masters Courses in Finance, Human Resources, Marketing and Information Management which are nearly equivalent to the MMS course. We also have a doctoral program in management.

We also run a PG diploma in management studies for officers of the Indian Navy, in association with the Naval Warfare Institute. Similarly, we run a Certificate Programme in Capital Markets (CPCM) in association with BSE. Besides this, we also provide consultancy services to private, public sector enterprises and state and central governments in different functional disciplines of management.

[strikevan]

hey,
dats a wonderful article...me attemptin to get into JB dis year....could ne of d JBIMS students in pagalguy throw some more light on Strategym, the annual Business convention dat was mentioned in the article?..also it would be of gr8 help if ne1 could give me a rough idea of the cut-offs last year

[Jaani Dushmann]

Originally Posted by strikevan

hey,
dats a wonderful article...me attemptin to get into JB dis year....could ne of d JBIMS students in pagalguy throw some more light on Strategym, the annual Business convention dat was mentioned in the article?..also it would be of gr8 help if ne1 could give me a rough idea of the cut-offs last year

hi strikevan

I am a student of JBIMS curently studying in first year.

Glad you asked about Strategym. Its the anual business convention of JBIMS. It is in effect for more than 10 years now and is getting better every year. Needless to say it is a novel concept which happens only in JBIMS. Here students of JBIMS present research papers in front of corporates and other B-school students, following which there is an in-depth analysis & discussion by the panelists (who are industry experts .. generally CEOs or Memebers of the board). The students research for about an year on such a topic. These topics are generally problems faced by industry or the future of industry.

Much before low cost airlines came into existance, we had our students present it as a paper in year 2003-2004 itself

High Level of research is conducted by the students of JBIMS and hence such solutions are generally purchased by the corporates listening to them at a price of our choice. Many more opportunities open up in response to such quality papers.

Strategym like any other business convention is organized in a 5-Star hotel in a very professional environment. Traditionally it has attracted the best in industry.

This year Strategym was held in ITC Grand Maratha Sheraton. Alongside the very best of our alumni we had Mr. Kishore Biyani, Mr Jignesh Shah and many such biggies from industry. Students presented well - researched papers on topics such as Housing price index, Demistefying SEZs, Bollywood film release dates etc.

As a result it is one of the most sought after events in the academic calendar.

About cutoffs
open category Mumbai seat -177/240
OMS - 184/240
open category outside mumbai within Maharashtra - 173/240
J&K seat 171/240

[deadman17]

Hi strikevan..

Ideas, Innovations, Solutions … three words which will impact the way corporate decision making is seen in the industry today. That’s what Strategym – the Annual Business Convention of JBIMS - is all about. It is about providing a whole new approach to the age old problem faced by the industry and bring about a paradigm shift in the way various business situations are perceived in a fast changing business arena.

Strategym, since its inception in 1995 has provided a cutting edge to business through innovative ideas and solutions in the unexplored areas of management disciplines .The fresh and innovative perspectives of youth are congregated with the expertise and experience of luminaries of the corporate world. The papers presented at the convention focus on the current industry problems and spawn innovative solutions, and they go through a stringent screening before being presented at Strategym where they are adjudged by invited industry experts and prominent faculty members


For more details please about Strategym and the college itself please visit the website of JBIMS.

Jamnalal Bajaj Institute Of Management Studies

[crazy_frog]

Dear Puys,
This was definately NOT a good interview.
I dont understand why the interviewer asked questions which are of very common knowledge. For e.g.

Originally Posted by ultra lord

What is the JBIMS cut off score for CET?

JBIMS does not have any pre-fixed CET cut off score. The top rankers in the CET and GD/PI are admitted to the institute.

Thats the entire CET selection procedure.

Originally Posted by ultra lord

Can you share some information regarding the batch profile of students in terms of gender, previous education background and work experience? Does JBIMS prefer any profiles of educational background and work experience to others?

In the Batch of 2007, 50 pc of the students have less than 6 months or no work experience. About 15 pc of the batch has more than two years of work experience. 70 pc of the students in this batch are engineers. The rest of the batch comprises graduates from commerce, arts, pure sciences and management.
The Batch of 2008 is highly skewed towards experienced students with almost 80 pc of the batch having significant prior work experience. Majority of the students are engineers, but there is a lot of diversity with students from medicine, arts and commerce disciplines as well.

There is no mandate for the institute to select candidates with work experience or from a particular educational background. We are open to all candidates. However if candidates have significant work experience, which adds value to their candidature, then it can work in their favor.

One can easily find this information given at JBIMS site.

Originally Posted by ultra lord

Coming to placements, what is the placement process followed at JBIMS? What are the kinds of jobs, students at JBIMS have been taking up in the past three years?

Placement season begins with companies coming to campus for pre placement talks. This helps students assess opportunities for growth, job profiles and the remuneration offered. It also gives students the chance to interact with employees of the company and learn more about the work culture. Based on this assessment companies are ranked by the batch through a democratic voting process. This ranking/slotting determines the order in which companies visit campus for recruitment.

Over the last few years JBIMS has proved to be a happy hunting ground for consulting majors. Students have been taking up offers in companies like Mckinsey, Accenture, TSMG, KPMG, and Ernst & Young. Traditionally, JBIMS has been a favorite of banks and FMCGs. Our regular recruiters include Citibank, HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, ICICI, HLL, ITC, Colgate Palmolive and Coca Cola to name a few.

This is also there.

Originally Posted by ultra lord

Could you explain the quota system, which is the part of the CET admission procedure? Are students looked at differently depending on the state to which they belong? Do you feel a difference in quality of students because of this system?

One can check look forthis info at dte site or at any thread dedicated to CET.

4 out of 12-13 questions are simply useless to be asked to director of a reputed institute when answer to those Qs are but obvious and are known to almost everyone who is concerned of it.
No doubt,questions on Infra., mentorship programme, PGDBM are very good and helps the reader to understand the JBIMS view on it.
But still, as a puy, I really think that this kind of interview is not expected from pg.
One more- I am not any expert interviewer or knowledgeble person but felt like commenting on this.:neutral:
Mods, muze thoda gyan do.
Thanks

[Jaani Dushmann]

Originally Posted by crazy_frog

Dear Puys,
This was definately NOT a good interview.
I dont understand why the interviewer asked questions which are of very common knowledge. For e.g.

Guess everyone can express their views as it is an open forum, so I respect your opinion. However i beg to differ from your opinion.

Originally Posted by crazy_frog

Thats the entire CET selection procedure.

Just to put across some statistics : out of 4-5 threads going on Pagalguy pertaining CET admission procedure, 70-80 percent of the puys are asking the same questions answered by this question, so i guess it is useful for such people.

Originally Posted by crazy_frog

One can easily find this information given at JBIMS site.

This is also there.

Placements are the backbone of any institute and one of the most important factors to choose a college. Hence a small mention of it would only aid a decision of selecting an institute. Although such information is given on the site, a mention of it can only help few puys who still havent visited the website. Information about Work experience in the batch gives an aspirant idea about the learning he would be getting from his peers.

Originally Posted by crazy_frog

One can check look for this info at dte site or at any thread dedicated to CET.

Some statistics again : 70% of posts are with such queries

Originally Posted by crazy_frog

4 out of 12-13 questions are simply useless to be asked to director of a reputed institute when answer to those Qs are but obvious and are known to almost everyone who is concerned of it.

The idea of having such an interview featuring on Pagal Guy on its front page is to aid few aspirants who still have few queries. The idea is to have everything CONSOLIDATED in ONE Location so that an aspirant doesnt spend time in finding it at multiple locations and can concentrate on his primary job of preparing for the exam. There is no better way of answering queries than by the director himself as it cant get more AUTHENTIC than that.

The director is a respected person and has taken efforts to understand doubts arising amongst general masses and has comprehensivly cleared every doubt.

Originally Posted by crazy_frog

No doubt,questions on Infra., mentorship programme, PGDBM are very good and helps the reader to understand the JBIMS view on it.

Thanx a lot
The way you have found these questions good, there are many others who would find other questions good and the intention is to clear doubts of about 1 Lakh aspirants and not few individuals


Nothing in this post is intended to hit you hard. It is just pulling in few statistics and reasons as to why things happen. I hope now when you go through the interview again you wont find it useless. But then again you can always express your opinion and any feedback good or bad is always welcome.

Hope this helps
Thanks

[nakul05]

Originally Posted by crazy_frog

Dear Puys,
This was definately NOT a good interview.
I dont understand why the interviewer asked questions which are of very common knowledge. For e.g.

Thats the entire CET selection procedure.


One can easily find this information given at JBIMS site.

This is also there.


One can check look forthis info at dte site or at any thread dedicated to CET.

4 out of 12-13 questions are simply useless to be asked to director of a reputed institute when answer to those Qs are but obvious and are known to almost everyone who is concerned of it.
No doubt,questions on Infra., mentorship programme, PGDBM are very good and helps the reader to understand the JBIMS view on it.
But still, as a puy, I really think that this kind of interview is not expected from pg.
One more- I am not any expert interviewer or knowledgeble person but felt like commenting on this.:neutral:
Mods, muze thoda gyan do.
Thanks

If you really feel some of the questions remain unanswered, ask them here. As a student of JBIMS, would answer any fact based question on institute and for the opinion based ones, if u come up with good ques, we can get convey them to the director.

[crazy_frog]

@nakul05,
Thanks man,
I dont have any Q. right now but would surely ask if I come across any.

@jaani dushman,
Unfortunately I dont agree with you much.

Only thing I want to say is that, when one has opportunity to ask about many other possible things why waste time/space in asking that type of questions.

For a puy, authenticity of the posts by mods is quite enough when any informative data is provided. So to make those points clear it was easier to make a post at any thread or start a new one.
Anyway, I would like to see any mod giving his opinion over this and help me.

[nk1008]

In my opinion, Director's interview was definitely a very informative one and would definitely aid prospective students in their choice of B-Schools they wish to apply to.

As far as I understand, the purpose of such interviews is dissemination of relevant information about the institute. If the interview serves this purpose, I dont see any reason for the interview to be rated as good or bad.

I have gone through many dean interviews on pagalguy and have found questions such as the cut-off for exams, differentiating factor of the institute,batch profile, placements etc featuring in most of them. It is quite obvious that when a dean is interviewed about his/her institute, these questions are the most relevant ones as they cover the most important aspects pertaining to a B-School.

With so many B-schools to keep track of, most prospective students would definitely appreciate such interviews and I must congratulate pagalguy for having made the life of such students easier by posting dean interviews.

[deadman17]

Originally Posted by crazy_frog

@nakul05,
Thanks man,
I dont have any Q. right now but would surely ask if I come across any.

@jaani dushman,
Unfortunately I dont agree with you much.

Only thing I want to say is that, when one has opportunity to ask about many other possible things why waste time/space in asking that type of questions.

For a puy, authenticity of the posts by mods is quite enough when any informative data is provided. So to make those points clear it was easier to make a post at any thread or start a new one.
Anyway, I would like to see any mod giving his opinion over this and help me.

I think you are just criticizing the interview for the heck of it...
If you go through the threads, you will find various basic questions like the ones explained in the interview being asked again and again in the interview.
For people having no knowledge about CET/JBIMS it would be an eye opener of sort...
It is one thing going to the website and seeing the details and another hearing someone closely related to the institute narrate them....

And what you are considering waste of time/space will be very useful information for someone else...
If that is the case why have an interview as all the details are available either on DTE/JBIMS site......