The academic rigour and curriculum - 2

Continuing the discussion on curriculum.....

There are many simulation excercises during the course. Markstrat is one such computer simulation environment in which many firms will compete to maximize their profits. You will be using this software as part of the advanced Marketing course. The entire batch is split into groups of 4 or 5 and 18 "parallel" play industries will be created. Five firms A, E, I, O and U compete in each of these parallel worlds. Each firm holds a different market position like in a real world. One will be a market leader, one will be a close second, one might be a player catering to a niche requirement, etc. The particiating groups compete over a period of 8 years. At the beginning of each year you are expected to make a marketing decision and you will see the result of your decisions (w.r.t. those made by your opponents) at the end of the year. Various factors are in your control. You can invest in R&D, you decide how much to produce, you control inventory levels, you control the distribution channel, etc. Many current ISB students said that the Markstrat has been the most interesting they have done so far at this School.

further, the schedules are so planned that you do not get used to a particular timing of classes, thus while you may have a morning schedule in term 1, the timings for term-2 may be in the afternoons and you may be back to a morning schedule next term. At first glance, the courses for most of the terms look pretty quant heavy, the general perception is that IIT guys would find it pretty easy while the rest would have to work a bit harder.

You have various clubs. The one of the major club in ISB is the consulting club which conducts panel discussions, speaker series. The alumni students also participate in the discussions of the club. Typically, the alumni share mainly on subjects like a consultant’s typical day etc. Most of the alumni, who took placements in consultancy, emphasized that though consulting careers give you a great opportunity to constantly learn, innovate and challenge yourself, it’s a tough job at the end of the day and you need to be one up always to succeed. Further, it was clearly mentioned that consultants had to travel a lot and keep away from their base offices for long periods adding to the challenges of the job.

For the current Class of 2007, ISB has done away with interviews for selecting candidates for exchange programme, instead the bidding system has been extended to exchange selection as well. The bidding system is commonly used across b-schools to allocate elective courses. Each student is alloted a fixed quota of bidding points that can be used to bid for courses and now also the exchange programme. The ones bidding the highest are selected for the course. As was expected the bids for the exchange programme reached some very high levels with people bidding almost all the available points to the exchange programme.

One of the current student said "The only shortcoming with exchange in a one year course is that the exchange period typically includes the placement period, which would mean that you might not be able to participate in the campus placement process. Although, last year some of the students did travel back to India during the placement period , but it still is viewed as a risk by most since whether you can come back or not also depends on the schedule of exams etc at the school. Having said that being on a foreign campus is also a once in a lifetime experience.... life's full of choices, heard about tradeoffs...."

Enjoy the journey called ISB.