Ishneet Singh Kalra's Review On XLRI, Jamshedpur

The college management is very flexible and deals with cases as they are. For ex there are late night parties every month on campus going up to 4 in the night. An XL student went to MTV Roadies and won the show while being in college. The dean gave special permission to the student and shows that the focus is on all round development and not only academics.

XAT, scored 99.6 percentile.I opted for this course as at that point in time it was my opinion that the only colleges better than XLRI were IIM A, IIM B and IIM C. Unfortunately I didn't get calls from them. Other than that the college alumnus and culture was fantastic and the overall development of a person is much better than the IIMs where the focus is primarily on academics.

The course structure is pretty good with most of the courses well though out and material well researched. One issue is that there are way too many courses over the two years with some of them redundant but you will still have to do them to complete the credits. However, this is a problem not only with XLRI but all B school in India. The focus on research though is minimal.

Yes XLRI does provide stipend. The average stipend at that points was close to Rs. 25000 per month. The overall experience is positive as firms that interns give good projects and focus on grooming the students. Most of the top FMCG firms and banks come for internships and lot of the them either give PPO or PPI if your performance is good.

The placements are done in two sections - Laterals (more than 2 years work ex) and Freshers (below 2 yrs work ex). All the students got placed by the third day and almost all the big FMCG firms including HUL, P&G< ITC etc came to campus. For finance all banks came to campus however there were lesser number of Investment Banks that came. The actual average Package was around 12 Lakh.

XLRI focusses a lot on bonding between students and their camaraderie. There is hardly any under cutting that takes place. There is one annual cultural event which takes place where participants from most of the top B schools come. Also, there is an annual intra and inter sports competition with IIM C which is highly popular and coveted. In additional local committees will keep on having cultural and educational events throughout the year.

Fees is very feasible and covers the hostel expenses, books, mess and all other expenses. Fees is paid twice in a year and though it is feasible it is rising every year and has gone from around eight lakhs for two years to about nineteen lakhs for two years in the last six years.

There are very few scholarships that are offered by the college. There is one scholarship which is in the name of an ex student which you can apply for only after you start college. It is given based on you achievements before you entered XLRI. XLRI has tie up with State Bank of India for loans and it offers better rates than what you get in the market.

Campus life in XLRI is amongst the best in all B schools in India, the genders ratio is almost 1:4 (females to males). Lot of focus on sports with football being most popular due to rains! There are two tennis courts, basketball court, badminton court and gym facilities available on campus. The canteen and mess food is much better than under grad colleges. Overall its like a home away from home.

There is a men's hostel for first year and a separate men's hostel for second year. In the first year you will share room with another person from your batch and in the second year you will get a single room In the first year the rooms are allocated by the college and you cant change them officially. In the second year the rooms are allocated according to your graded and you can apply for rooms in groups as well.

The seniors are very helpful and not arrogant at all. They will be there to guide you at every step. However the alumni network is weak specially for the BM students as there is no one official portal or email id for XL alumni. This feature is very strong in other B schools but not so much in XLRI.

Exams are throughout the length of the course and every professor would have his own style. There would however be one mid term, one end term and quizzes in the middle. Some of the courses gave you a lot of time to relax whereas some were very stressful with projects, quizzes etc happening all the time. Key is to choose right subjects every trimester.

Faculty of the college is very good. Overall 80% of the faculty I would say meets the bar and is very interested in imparting quality education. Pitabas Mohanty who takes finance course such as SAPM is exceptionally talented and knowledgeable. In fact most of the finance staff is excellent with marketing staff being average barring 1-2 professors.