The ranking of Symbiosis at No. 4 position is highly questionable. No student will choose Symbiosis over IIM Lucknow, XLRI Jamshedpur, IIM Kozhikode and IIM Indore!

No student will choose ICFAI, Hyderabad (BT Rank 9) or NMIMS, Mumbai (BT Rank 10) over SP Jain, Mumbai (BT Rank 11) and FMS, Delhi (BT Rank 12).

You simply can't rank MDI Gurgaon No. 18 and ABS Noida No. 20 as if both are at the same level!

XIM Bhubaneswar should definitely be in the Top 20.

Flawed Methodology

The Business Today B-school Survey uses A C Nielsen's 'proprietary Winning Brands model'. But can a model, which is designed to measure the Brand Equity score of conventional FMCG products or services, be employed for educational institutes?

Nielsen's website states that Winning Brands addresses the following 'marketing issues': -

Brand Equity

Advertising Effectiveness-Campaign Comparisons if undertaken on a continuous basis

Market Segmentation

Category Health Analytics

I believe a B-school is a brand, but its equity is NOT built on advertising. The equity of an educational institute rests on a combination of factors. The most important ones being: -

Quality of Students

Admission Procedure

Quality of Faculty

Achievements of its Alumni

Next

* Contributed by -
Rashmi Bansal is an IIM Ahmedabad graduate and founder-editor of the popular youth magazine JAM (www.jammag.com). She can be reached at rashmi@jammag.com