A glimpse into IIM Bodh Gaya

One must appear for CAT(Common Admission Test) which is conducted every year at the end of November. The aspirant must hold a bachelor's degree awarded by a recognized university or educational institution. Check out this website iimcat.ac.in for the registration process. The admission process is divided into stages. Stage 1- Appearing for CAT entrance examination (score is valid only for 1 year). Stage 2 - CAP (conducted jointly by 9IIMs) and SAP (conducted separately by IIM Bodh Gaya and IIM Jammu) this stage involves Group discussion and personal interview, owing to pandemic GD has been lifted off and Personal interview is conducted on virtual mode. The call for stage 2 is assured only when the overall percentile and sectional percentiles fall under the eligibility criteria announced by IIM Bodh Gaya, Generally, the overall minimum cutoff lies around 92 percentile for the general category and 90 percentile for the General category through SAP.

The faculty to student ratio is fair viz 1:10. Most of the faculty are well experienced with Ph.D. in management awarded from premier B schools, few of them had industry experience also. The course curriculum is very well structured and pedagogy is very interactive with group discussions and case presentations. We have 3 terms in a year and students are evaluated based on their performance in assignments, project reports, and written exams(Mid & Sem).

There is a satisfactory exposure to startup culture in the form of live projects and internship opportunities. The roles offered in the internships are mostly Sales in marketing, Financial advisor in Finance, Data analyst in IT Analytics & services. The average package for the recent batch is 65,000 and reported a 100% placement record.

Final Placements for the recent batch is quite impressive with an increase of 33.3% YoY in the median package(12.31) and a growth of 76% YoY for the highest package. The institute bagged 200 offers for 175 students. 100% placement is achieved for the entire batch. There is a mix of companies participating in placement drives from various sectors like Manufacturing, Fintech, IT analytics and service, BFS and Consulting. Some of the prominent companies that participated are McKinsey, Morgan Stanley, Aditya Birla Group, Wipro, Accenture, Deloitte, and many more.

Compared to peer IIMs the fees for 2 years MBA programme is quite low and reasonable. The fee payment has to be done term-wise equally divided among the six terms. Students can avail of merit-based scholarships and financial assistance is also provided for economically weaker sections. Students apply for student loans at the nearby SBI branch at the campus at a flat interest rate of 7%.

The annual fest of IIM Bodh Gaya is 'Elegante' which is conducted in the month of March every year. Due to the pandemic, only half of our batch got the chance to visit the campus. The permanent campus is under construction, hopefully, it will get ready by November 2022. There are 10 committees and 10 clubs in the college which run actively by organizing events and competitions around the year, completely driven by students under the guidance of faculty. In the view of the online mode of study, students are provided access to online libraries.

To guide the aspirants in their journey to IIM the Admission committee of IIM Bodh Gaya releases PI-KIT every year which covers the topics of GD and technical questions of various backgrounds. During my interview, both my technical and communication skills are tested which went around 15 minutes. Having work experience in any field is an added advantage. The scores in 10th and Intermediate are also given adequate weightage while preparing the final merit list.