Why schools are so scared to share placement information? : GMAT Accepting B-Schools : PaGaLGuY Forums

Let me tell upfront that the following report is not created by me.
http://www.pagalguy.com/news/why-top-b-schools-shying-away-reporting-their-placements-under-iprs-a-29357
So I am not the only one who is questioning all these non transparent or motivated greying of information.

Neo2000

23 Sep '12

@WouldBeCrazy That sounds like a great idea. But i'd like to go one better - Why don't the both of us meet-up after 1 year on this thread and re-look? Might be fun no? :)

WouldBeCrazy

23 Sep '12

@Neo2000
Thank you. You used the workd RANT many a times. Revisit this thread after a year and you will probably realise who really ranted!!

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WouldBeCrazy

23 Sep '12

Thanks Sameer. Published stats are sanitised information that only highlights the positives...
Will look forward for your detals.

MartianOnEarth

21 Sep '12

Adding a few perspectives. Rather than focus too much on placement numbers, stats and formats, it might help to look at the bigger picture of what schools are trying to say.
In a good economy, most bschools (reputed ones as well as the not-so-reputed ones) have a gala time and students are spo...

MartianOnEarth

09:07 PM, 21 Sep '12

21 Sep '12

Adding a few perspectives. Rather than focus too much on placement numbers, stats and formats, it might help to look at the bigger picture of what schools are trying to say.

In a good economy, most bschools (reputed ones as well as the not-so-reputed ones) have a gala time and students are spoilt for choice.

On the flip side, when the going is bad, well, there's not much that schools can do. A lot depends on when you'll be graduating, what the state of the economy will be and what your post-MBA goals are.

This is why the placement figures and pie-charts need to be taken with a pinch of salt. It's a 'blended' picture of what happened last year. But for an individual candidate that blended picture means very little mainly because the possibility of getting a well paying job for each candidate is dependent on factors.

The sectors and company names listed in the placement report can be used to get a high-level idea of what sectors were hot last year. That's about it.

A good school may be able to open up more doors for you, but it can't get you placed.

Rather than get carried away with stats and figures, a better strategy would be to design a road-map for yourself that takes into consideration your unique experiences and aspirations.

On a side note, Cambridge MBA (my alma mater) recently published their placement stats and mentioned that 97% of the class has been placed. I'm interviewing them for the MBA Crystal Ball blog, trying to dig a little deeper into the published stats and what it might mean for new applicants. Will try to come back and share the link here when it gets published.

- Sameer Kamat
Founder | MBA Crystal Ball

Founder - MBA CRYSTAL BALL (mbacrystalball.com) | Twitter www.twitter.com/mba_cb

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Neo2000

21 Sep '12

LOL! i gave 3 different reasons for why a company didnt get any student and you've given 3 completely different reasons. Those are still true though. That is how the recruitment process on-campus works. There will be some companies who come simply because they want to continue maintaining their ...

Neo2000

06:24 PM, 21 Sep '12

21 Sep '12

@WouldBeCrazy said:
@Neo2000
Great, finally you shown your hidden brilliance. I truly appreciate that.Zero yield for company OR none of the student were able to crack that company or the company was not serious, they just visited the school as their annual pilgrimage.... anything is possible. So listing of all great companies does not mean anything unless you give a number against them.Placement information are similar to annual reports. Regulation/compliance are there in both but creative people always finds ways to go ...

LOL! i gave 3 different reasons for why a company didnt get any student and you've given 3 completely different reasons. Those are still true though. That is how the recruitment process on-campus works. There will be some companies who come simply because they want to continue maintaining their relationship with the college even though they aren't going to hire anybody. On the other hand, there will be companies who really want somebody but there just aren't enough students for them to get their hands on. This happens in almost every top b-school. What kind of number do you want against them? The number that attended the session or the number of offers the company made? You won't get either because it's a way for the school to protect both their and the companies' reputation. By reporting standards, that is fair practice. The school has no obligation to you to report which of those companies weren't able to attract a single student or were simply on campus to maintain numbers. That is the way it works. IF you do want those numbers, then you will have to find somebody that graduated from Said and ask them. The internet is not going to give you that number.

If we consider your CASS cousin, the school will rightfully denote that as "Student-Facilitated " opportunity of employment. Therefore "Quality of Percentage"? As for the uncertain future, thats a risk everybody takes when they attend an international b-school. There is no guarantee that you will not be in the 1-10% of the class who does not have a job even at the end of the 3months. Whether you went to a top10 school or a placed ranked in the 90-100, there is no guarantee of a job. Except that a top10 will probably give you more access. No International B-School is going to guarantee you a job.

I'd also like to point out that your understanding of Harvard's reputation is perhaps a little misguided. How does 50% of the class cheating affect Harvard's reputation.

If anything, Harvard's academic-reputation has only been strengthened. The general opinion in Boston right now is that those 50% are idiots who could not cope with Harvard's demands and that this is only a reflection of how today's generation are not willing to work hard and feel entitled. (p.s. I live in Boston so i know what i'm talking about)

I honestly don't understand the purpose of this rant. I have broken down the stats for you as best as I can. I've pointed out that you need to research and read more on your own. You need to contact alumni to get a complete picture. There are other forums as well that discuss these stats and where alumni are more active. If you do not have the time, that is a completely different story.

This is my last post simply because your ranting is not adding value to this discussion. You do not appear to have any idea of how international recruiting and placements works and you aren't willing to do any work.

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WouldBeCrazy

21 Sep '12

@Neo2000
Great, finally you shown your hidden brilliance. I truly appreciate that.
Zero yield for company OR none of the student were able to crack that company or the company was not serious, they just visited the school as their annual pilgrimage.... anything is possible. So listing of a...

WouldBeCrazy

02:45 PM, 21 Sep '12

21 Sep '12

@Neo2000

Great, finally you shown your hidden brilliance. I truly appreciate that.

Zero yield for company OR none of the student were able to crack that company or the company was not serious, they just visited the school as their annual pilgrimage.... anything is possible. So listing of all great companies does not mean anything unless you give a number against them.

Placement information are similar to annual reports. Regulation/compliance are there in both but creative people always finds ways to go around that. In comparison to annual reports, placement reports has not much compliance to follow. People STUDY anuual report, not just read. Aggregation, sanitisation, abstraction are many a time used to cleverly hide the underlying information, the true picture. In good time, it may not matter as all will have too many choices but it bad time, you realise at the end of the programme that you have no jobs. There are many cases where student came back to BLR and joined IT companies. My cousin was unable to find a decent job from CASS and joined a small start up after a long period of UNCERTAIN future. His school will have % but what is the quality of that %?

A wrong representation of placement data at the worst case will affect a school's ranking, nothing else. Reputation will not affect otherwise HBS would have gone down the drain after more than 50% students were caught red handed copying in exam!!

People are clever and they know how to save their back and make information deliberately GREY ... so that they can conveniently present their interpretation of the truth. Look at the home page of any of the schools and you will find a horrible amount of this kind of intentional or unintentional CLAIMS. The most of the tall claims are made predominantly in their ranking and a distant second is placement information. Top 20-30 schools has little room to play with these numbers but after that it is rampant.

Do you think coming on one of the many rankings, in one of the category, that too in the year 2007 gives you right to shout "we are the best". Then a small foot note to say in abc ranking on salary increase in 2007, we were the top in the UK. And my friend, I have no reason to believe that schools are more ethical in placement information where there are no where to verify their claims. Atleast internet gives us an avenue to hear different voices.

I am not paranoid but at the same time I am not sold to all those fancy pie charts. It is a major decision for my life and I am trying to hear all the versions.

Thanks bro, you made this discussion more live rather than usual "rate my profile".

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maidenfreak

21 Sep '12

4+ years is fine. It wont harm your chances. Am really nerve wracked. I have 8 :S Lets see how it goes.

kmayank24

21 Sep '12

Hi, i just want to know whether a work ex of 4yrs+ harm ones chances of getting into a good b school.I am definitely aiming for one.10th-86.912th-78.1Eng-8.45(DGPA)Work ex of 4yrs+ in ITPlease reply...M waiting eagerly.....

Neo2000

21 Sep '12

First - it's very clearly given at the bottom of the page that the data is self-reported for 86% of the class which is approximately 204students. The remaining 14% were sponsored by a company or were returning to the company so they are out of the equation.
Exec-MBAs/other business-program stu...

Neo2000

02:08 AM, 21 Sep '12

21 Sep '12

First - it's very clearly given at the bottom of the page that the data is self-reported for 86% of the class which is approximately 204students. The remaining 14% were sponsored by a company or were returning to the company so they are out of the equation.

Exec-MBAs/other business-program students rarely if ever are counted for in a college's MBA placement report. Additionally this http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/degrees/mba/Pages/classprofile.aspx indicates that their Full-Time MBA program strength for 2011-12 is 248. Which means 237 for the year 2010-11 is right.

37 people joined companies until Walmart? Yes. Why is that so surprising? Students of the top-bschools are always in demand and that list not only indicates those who came to campus and recruited but most likely hidden in that list are companies that were probably unable to recruit even a single-student. Meaning they came, pitched, interviewed, made an offer to a few but unfortunately for the company, nobody took them up. In b-school lingo - their Yield was 0% :D

There are about 116 companies listed in that list. Also worth mentioning is that 36% of the students found jobs on their own. (If you scroll over School Facilitated

http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/careersreport/internships.html?3:16 you'll see they cover a wide range of activities)

(As a side note - the rather popular MFE program of Said has its own placement report. So yes, the huge list shows ONLY full time MBA recruiting companies.)

Math time again - 36% of 204 = 73. If 73 students didnt find jobs on-campus, then that list of 116 companies is incomplete because these 73students obviously found jobs somewhere.

We started with 204 -73 = 131 students found jobs on campus versus 116 companies who turned up. I'd say quite a few went away empty-handed since Deloitte and E&Y; are also in that list and both of them walked away with 6 apiece.

What you should be taking away from the placement reports - are the companies that you want to work at listed in that list? Does the industry/sector you want to work in have a high % of the student population accepting jobs as compared to the other industry/sector. From the Employment-Sector-After-Graduation section, i'd say that Said does pretty well in Finance and General Consulting. Which is pretty much the common consensus about Said.

Hope this helps :)

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WouldBeCrazy

20 Sep '12

What I would comment is, you are not able to see beyond what is shown to you or you are trying to act smart.
Your CBJ link does not worked for me (I give benefit of doubt!!) but I had seen that, just pie charts
http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/careersreport/recruiters.html?3:16
Lets look at SB...

Neo2000

19 Sep '12

Dude seriously?? Percentage of What??? Come on man - you aren't doing any work. Schools will show their graduating batch size and then calculate percentages from that. For schools that don't, then they are playing around and you need to dig just a little deeper. The MBA Career Services Council h...

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Neo2000

07:37 PM, 19 Sep '12

19 Sep '12

@WouldBeCrazy said:
First of all agree to your point that US schools are much better than the European schools when it comes to sharing information. My observations are on European schools and your observations are on US schools. I should have made that clear upfront ...

Dude seriously?? Percentage of What??? Come on man - you aren't doing any work. Schools will show their graduating batch size and then calculate percentages from that. For schools that don't, then they are playing around and you need to dig just a little deeper. The MBA Career Services Council has guidelines for reporting all kinds of stats and the schools are perfectly within their right to use that to their advantage.

Here's a nice PG article on the MBA-CSC standards for India - http://www.pagalguy.com/news/iimas-placement-reporting-standards-ready-use-but-who-takers-a-14605

IE's placement report - probably as slick as LBS' - http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct;=j&q;=&esrc;=s&source;=web&cd;=1&cad;=rja&ved;=0CCIQFjAA&url;=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ie.edu%2Fbusiness%2Fprogramas%2FIMBA%2FPDF%25C2%25B4S%2Fie_international_mba_placement_report_2011.pdf&ei;=GcVZUMONBY3O0QHox4DADQ&usg;=AFQjCNF8senKOuhWt0gmdxX-Vzw4DUpl0Q&sig2;=ht4E-nuTQFPXisbSHePdzw

cambridge-Judge - http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/mba/careers/report.html is pretty slick again.

As is Said - http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/careersreport/default.htm

Smaller and Bigger schools are Never relative. There is a huge difference between them. And that difference only gets more pronounced the wider the gap. Schools ranked 1-10, 11-20 virtually no difference in between the group. but a school ranked in Top10 and another at 80s,90s the difference is so vast as to be stunning. I attended a school whose part-time MBA program is ranked in the top5. Yet they have no placement stats because the school has no idea who got placed where and what the salary was. This is an MBA program that has been around for 15years.

if my comments sounds irritated, my apologies. My grouse is with the fact that you aren't willing to do any digging or educating yourself. You want everything neatly sorted out and readily available to you. That's never going to happen. A person gets to the "top quality" because they've spent the time researching, digging and understanding.

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WouldBeCrazy

19 Sep '12

First of all agree to your point that US schools are much better than the European schools when it comes to sharing information. My observations are on European schools and your observations are on US schools. I should have made that clear upfront instead of showing example of schools.
Rest of...

WouldBeCrazy

02:58 PM, 19 Sep '12

19 Sep '12

@Neo2000 said:
This is a lousy rant because

a) you've generalized to include all b-schools which isn't true (case in point: harvard - www.hbs.edu/about/statistics/m... , www.hbs.edu/recruiting/mba/dat... )
b) You've looked at how the information can be relevant only to YOU without realizing that what you think is necessary for you isn't really important for the rest of the population and which might just be more important that what you want.
c) You've already highlighted that you are both ignorant and lazy. Nobody is born with "top quality" to distinguish between schools. They get there by reading the plethora of information freely available on the web and forums, by doing their homework, by attending information sessions and by asking questions. You have not indicated any of that.

First of all agree to your point that US schools are much better than the European schools when it comes to sharing information. My observations are on European schools and your observations are on US schools. I should have made that clear upfront instead of showing example of schools.

Rest of your comments are more like an irritated sales man when questioned about their product. We have seen many such sales man, including that popular Amway uttering all those mouthful words that means nothing to others.

Schools mention percentage but never mentioned percentage of WHAT?. Hope you come down to ground and understand that percentage has meaning only when you say clearly percentage of what.

Smaller or bigger schools are relative terms, anyway, the 2nd tier schools in US/UK too fare better in ranking than many top schools of India. So it is a funny excuse to say I am second tier and I have only 2007 data.

I am humble enough, educated enough to refrain from calling someone bad.. but, when the question is about my own money, my own time ... I am not intimidated by sales rhetoric. If the data is not convincing to me, I will not buy in some fanciful jargon.

May I request you to share an good placement data sharing example from some of the European school and then we can discuss further.

LBS has an excellent details as they dare to do that http://www.london.edu/assets/documents/programmes/MBA_2011_Employment_Report%282%29.pdf

What about Judge, Said, Manchester, Cranfield, Warrick??

Do you think this is a good example http://www.ie.edu/business-school/degrees/mbas-and-executive-mbas

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maidenfreak

19 Sep '12

Cool Thanks ! Appreciate it, especially the last link. I do have the employment statistics, but I can now check (when I have time), which companies sponsor H1B!

Neo2000

19 Sep '12

Ross Reporting data is pretty comprehensive - http://www.bus.umich.edu/EmploymentData/ByIndustry.htm
Kelley only has 2010 because they struggled in 2011 with placements. It wasn't very impressive for them which is why I think they are keeping it on the down low.
Emory has a slick mag - htt...

maidenfreak

18 Sep '12

I am targeting 4 schools in the 1st round - Ross, Kelley, Emory and Kenan Flagler. I am planning to my marketing MBA, and I am looking to get into product management in the technology sector. (I am okay with other marketing functions too, but this seemed to be the most apt industry to go into, c...

Neo2000

18 Sep '12

Which school and what is your target role/industry?

ankanpaul2003

18 Sep '12

career services in schools abroad work a lot differently than in India. the Placement in most of hte colleges is not directly influenced by the college.

maidenfreak

18 Sep '12

I am not "envisioning" anything. Dont assume that I didnt not contact alumni, student clubs etc., It was based on their advice I contacted Career services. I wanted to know, which companies recruited, for my target role/industry and how many of them sponsored Visas. There is no one else you can ...

Neo2000

18 Sep '12

This is a lousy rant because
a) you've generalized to include all b-schools which isn't true (case in point: harvard - http://www.hbs.edu/about/statistics/mba.html , http://www.hbs.edu/recruiting/mba/data-and-statistics/ )b) You've looked at how the information can be relevant only to YOU wi...

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Neo2000

08:55 PM, 18 Sep '12

18 Sep '12

@WouldBeCrazy said: I was searching for my school and one of the major consideration is JOB after the programme. I believe I am not sooo top quality to differentiate between LBS and Judge a......Do I need a colorful pie chart?So far, no school is willing to share this basic information. Not sure why???

This is a lousy rant because

a) you've generalized to include all b-schools which isn't true (case in point: harvard - http://www.hbs.edu/about/statistics/mba.html , http://www.hbs.edu/recruiting/mba/data-and-statistics/ )

b) You've looked at how the information can be relevant only to YOU without realizing that what you think is necessary for you isn't really important for the rest of the population and which might just be more important that what you want.

c) You've already highlighted that you are both ignorant and lazy. Nobody is born with "top quality" to distinguish between schools. They get there by reading the plethora of information freely available on the web and forums, by doing their homework, by attending information sessions and by asking questions. You have not indicated any of that.

Fisking your Questions:

1. Most international b-schools will tell you their class-size and the percentage of the class that has a job 0months and 3months after graduation. This is helpful because colleges don't always admit the exact number of students every year, so telling you the % of students admitted makes far more sense. Do the math - Don't be Lazy.

2. You might not like the tables and the charts but others do. I repeat - Do the Math! Schools aren't hiding anything because eventually, one way or the other, that news is going to get out. If you want to be spoon-fed everything, that is a completely different story.

3. One of the many reasons this is hard is because not only are most of these data self-reported but often times cover a large variety of functional-roles within the same industry. Just because i got a job in a PE company doesn't mean I'm actually doing PE - i could be doing any number of things.

4. Yes. International b-schools make this very clear and which is why many of the people on this forum will always tell you to be very clear what services Career-Management Services offer. In an International b-school, you will find a job either by networking or by attending the many information sessions and then networking again. campus-placements happens only in India.

5. Again - generalized rant. In some of the smaller b-schools, this information is not available simply because the school itself does not have this information. They have no idea who is getting placed where simply because they are still working on spreading the word about their program. Or because the MBA is only a cash-cow for them. Maybe a bit of both.

6. Oh no you didnt!! Again,major schools will almost always make the first part of this information freely available on their website. (http://www.hbs.edu/recruiting/mba/data-and-statistics/recruiting-partners.html) it's the smaller schools who have a problem and don't do this for a variety of reasons.

As for the table put forth by you, I am soo glad they don't do anything of the sort. If i was a career-changer, I would be more interested in knowing a) the companies i want to work at and b) the functions I want to work in are being hired for at the school. Your table provides neither of the information. Harvard's class size is 900+ Is it more preferable for me to read that Harvard placed 500 students which is both IIM-A+B's total class size or to know that 90% of the class does get a job within 3months?

@maidenfreak said: This is the exact problem I have. I have been trying to contact career management services in various schools, but they dont reply on time!! Its been 3 days since my email :@...

Er, 3days is not a lot of time. I'm not sure why you are envisioning Career-Management-Services just sitting around waiting to reply to emails sent by prospective students. Their priorities are hopefully a lot more different. I would also go so far as to say you are asking the wrong people. Students on campus are more likely to give you a more complete and far more accurate information. You are looking the MBA program as a springboard into your desired company. A b-school has no obligation to you to see itself that way. For them, the course is more important because they are in the business of education, not placement. Finally, details regarding H1-B is your problem, not the schools'. Atleast on this part, nearly every school does post some information on their website. However, the school itself has no role in the H1-B process, that's in the hands of your employer.

A little more research, a little less pointless ranting.

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