BT-AC Nielsen B-School Survey: 2007 Vs 2006, what comparison shows. MBAUniverse.com analysis

The survey is conducted by market research agency AC Nielsen. MBAUniverse.com compared the rankings released this year (Business Today, September 23, 2007) with last years rankings (Business Today, July 16, 2006). Analysis of these rankings over two years offers some interesting patterns.

While the top ranking B-schools, especially IIMs, seem quite settled in their positions (5 IIMs occupy top 6 positions), there is a lot of churn lower down the order. (See table below)

There are four new entrants in the Ranking 2007:
# 14. IIT-D (Department of Management Studies)
# 27. SIMSREE Mumbai
# 28. SIES Navi Mumbai
# 29. TA Pai Manipal
Five B-schools that were present in top 30 rankings of 2006, but dont figure in 2007 rankings.
B-School 2006 Rank
IIPM Delhi # 11
NIM-Ahd # 24
IMT Ghaziabad # 25
Osmania Hyd # 29
ABA Blr # 30

Absence of IIT based management institutes/ departments is noticeable in the survey rankings. Currently, IISc Bangalore, IIT Bombay, IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Delhi IT Madras, and IIT Roorkee offer Programmes in Management. Only IIT Delhi features in the BT survey, at a respectable # 14. Specialized institutes like IRMA, NITIE and MICA too are missing from the survey.

Our readers will know that the BT-AC Nielsen survey is based on a poll of MBA-stakeholder. Says the survey, We poll all the stakeholders of a B-school, comprising MBA wannabes, recruiters, young executives, current MBAs, and functional heads. Therefore, we dont try to quantify debatable parameters such as the number of academic papers written by B-school faculty or how many books it has in its library.

Survey is based on Nielsens proprietary Winning Brands model. This considers eight different attributes- reputation, teaching methodology, infrastructure, placement, admission eligibility, faculty, specialist units, and quality of placements. The survey is based on data collected from 592 respondents in 12 cities.

While BT writes BIMT- Chennai, this perhaps is BIM Trichy. 2006 ranks used here are for BIM Trichy