IIM Ahmedabad ranked 11th by FT

The Financial Times has its Global MBA rankings for 2011 out. IIM Ahmedabad is ranked 11th. It was not ranked in previous years. So this is completely out of the blue.

The Economist recently also published their MBA rankings. IIM Ahmedabad was ranked 85th – the only Indian MBA program to be on the list. Which is better than not being on the list, but only just.

So the FT ranking is quite a shot in the arm. I have never had any doubt that my fellow alumni can stand toe to toe with the best. The faculty and research, I know, could improve. But the students are the best anywhere. Yes, they are picky and high maintenance and tend to not fit into every organization. But, at least in part, that is because they are just smarter than the people around them.

OK enough self-serving praise. If IIM A is so hot, how come it didn’t even get a rank till last year?

You have to apply to be ranked, and I don’t know if the institute applied or not. But even so, there are a few things it has ranked high on, which may depend on changes to methodology, and that may have pushed it higher in the rankings.

Take a look at the FT page I have linked to above. It allows some pretty neat analysis on-the-fly.

IIM A has ranked high on Salary Today (3rd) and Weighted Salary (2nd). Since these were computed using PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) it has ranked quite high. It also ranked high on Increase in Salary, before and after the MBA (3rd). Also on Careers and Employment.

Not surprisingly, it ranked low (92nd) on Research and International Faculty (last). It also ranked low on Women in Faculty (12%).

Now, how all this was factored into the final rankings is not something I went into. I expect, Salaries must have had a pretty high weighting in the overall rank computation. Using PPP there, helps a lot, and I would argue is absolutely the right thing to do.

Now if only the institute were freed from the clutches of the government it could do something to attract world-class faculty and focus a lot more on research. Like many things in India (the economy, for instance) IIM Ahmedabad shines, in spite of, not because of its ownership by the Government of India.

[Update: As many readers have informed me, the FT ranking is for the PGP X program which is a 12 month full time MBA that accepts students with considerable work experience (avg 10 years), unlike the PGP program which is a 2 year MBA but accepts many (most?) students straight after college (as I did). The PGP program does not qualify, because of the low work ex requirement, for the FT rankings. The PGP X program, which is new, was ranked for the first time.]