With America's fourth largest investment bank Lehman Brothers filing for bankruptcy protection and Merrill Lynch being bought over by the Bank of America, placements at the Indian Institutes of Management will be affected.
These financial giants have so far been the biggest recruiters from the IIMs especially from the institutes at Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta.These have been among the day zero firms on IIM campuses and have made plum job offers.
"We are sitting on pre-placement offers from these companies, which go invalid after this development. So, the students will have to go through the regular placement process and look at other companies," said professor Sourav Mukherjee, chairperson, placements, IIM-Bangalore.
The institute will write to these banks in the next few weeks to seek clarification on the issue. Last year, IIM Bangalore had received around 20 job offers from the banks.
IIM Calcutta has recorded 54 offers so far from these banking banks. Last year, IIM-C received 90 pre-placement offers. Students have been offered international profiles with BCG, Mckinsey, Bain and AT Kearney in the consulting sector and Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Barclays, HSBC, Credit Suisse and Citibank in the investment banking sector. The institutes however, are not very enthusiastic of the banking and financial sector doing well on the campus this year.
"Banking giants like Lehman and Merrill have been the leading paymasters on our campus, offering crore-plus salaries. The confidence of students in the banking sector is collapsing with the bad news from the market," said an IIM professor.
The IIMs have decided to host new companies on campus. Many institutes have decided to invite smaller private equity players and wealth management firms. Unlike most years, the banking and financial services sector is not expected to be the best performer on campus this year.
"As of now, we have not heard of any tremors from the consulting sector so we are certainly pinning our hopes on the sector. The FMCG,marketing, manufacturing, trading and services sectors might also take the lead this year," added a placement official from an IIM.
Last year, IIM Ahmedabad placed around 45 per cent of students in the banking and financial sector. Around 37 per cent of students from the institute opted for a job in management consultancy. At IIM Bangalore, while 37 per cent students got placed in consulting jobs, 40 per cent opted for a career in the banking and financial sector.
Students are wary of joining investment banks. Says an IIM-A student: "IIM students are no more upbeat about an investment banking job and are finding these jobs risky. Moreover, there is a possibility of jobcuts in the industry following which offers from these banks are less likely to land up during placements."
As it is, investment banking had been losing status among students for the past year. Thus development will only accelerate the trend, students say.
Gowrish Prabhu, student co ordinator, post graduate programme for executives, IIM-A, says, "Having gained experience in specific areas, the executive programme students will not face any difficulty during placements since very few are interested in taking up jobs in investment banks and financial firms."
Association of Indian Management Schools (AIMS) is the national network with over 400 management schools. It represents Indian Management Schools in various national and international fora connected with Management Education. AIMS organises ” AIMS Test for Management Admissions (ATMA)” a standard test for admission to postgraduate management programme ATMA approved by AICTE, is focused on the student. It is designed to assess the aptitude for management education including verbal skills, quantitative skills and analytical reasoning of students.
ATMA has been approved by the Ministry of Human Resource Development of the Government of India for admission on All India Basis to the MBA / PGDM and other Postgraduate Programmes like MCA.
Eligibility: Bachelor’s degree in any discipline. Students appearing for their final year examination in 2009 are also eligible to apply.
ATMA 2009 - Important Dates
Sale of ATMA 2009 application kits starts: November 01, 2008
Last date for Sale of ATMA 2009 application kits: January 17, 2009
Last date for receipt of completed application forms: January 20, 2009
Date of Test: February 08, 2009 - Time:2.00 PM TO 5.00 PM.
JMET 2008 Analysis
MET retains its charm as the most predictable of the major exams and JMET2008 was no different. However, in no way was this among the easy exams of this season. In fact, JMET2008 was a monster in the league of the IIFT and CAT papers, with no respite for the students. The most common reaction among the student community after the exam was that the “QA cutoff would very low – tending towards 0 (!)”.
Section 1: Verbal Communication
No. of Questions: 40
The Verbal Communication section had questions from Reading Comprehension, Grammar, Vocabulary, Analogies and Fill in the blanks. The section had a good mix of both easy and difficult questions and a student who picked up the right questions will have no problems in clearing the. The RC passages were short and readable (as opposed to CAT) but like CAT, had two very close options in most cases, which made them a nightmare to negotiate. The vocabulary questions were not commonly used words which made them very difficult to answer. The Fill in the blanks and the questions based on semantics were doable and would have given opportunities to score
Section 2: Logical Reasoning
No. of Questions: 40
This section was dominated by the Logical Reasoning kind of questions, i.e., questions on Arguments, Strengthen & Weaken Statements and Logical Flaws. Unlike the previous years, very few questions were based on puzzles. This section was ambiguous and confusing and in several cases, one was better off working out the answers by the process of eliminating choices. There were two sets on Analytical Reasoning – one on blocks and the one based on tasks taken up by four persons, both of which were doable. Overall, this section can be classified as Easy-Moderate and was a section where marks could have been scored in this paper.
Section 3: Quantitative Aptitude
No. of Questions: 40
This section of the JMET has always managed to retain its reputation of being one of the toughest QA sections of all the management entrance exams. Traditionally there used to be a mix of questions on arithmetic as well as higher mathematics (from 10+2 level and sometimes graduation level mathematics). However, this year, the paper setters completely left out the ordinary arithmetic type of questions, involving the familiar topics of geometry, numbers and quadratic equations etc. Further, the questions on higher maths used to be mostly individual questions based on standard concepts. This year, there was a shift of focus from such type of questions to entirely application oriented questions. With the exception of a few individual questions that appeared in isolation, almost all the questions appeared in twelve sets of what can best be termed as “business caselets”, with a heavy emphasis on not only the conceptual understanding across various topics but also on the practical application of those concepts in a real-time problem/decision making situation. To this extent, most of the questions involved dealing with situations which were not perfectly structured as one would find in the usual objective type questions. An uncanny sense of discomfort would have plagued anyone and everyone trying to make sense of this section The concepts involved were as varied as probability distributions, present value of investments/cash flows, linear programming, matrices, differential calculus, curve fitting etc. In fact, the cut-off in this section is expected to be as low as 3 marks.
Section 4: Data Interpretation
No. of Questions: 30
This section, though having only 30 Qs was a nightmare for most students. This was very unlike the easy DI section of the past. Being different from what one was used to, the sets demanded intensive calculations which made this section moderately difficult. The easy sets here were the ones pertaining to Production & Sales and the one on newspapers, which could have been solved with a little bit of effort.
This JMET 2008 Analysis brought to you by TIME Institute.
Expected Overall JMET Cut-off marks by Time.
Institute
Expected Overall Cut-off
IIT-Bombay
50+
IIT-Delhi
45+
IISC
45+
IIT-Kanpur
40+
IIT-Kharagpur
40+
IIT-Chennai
40+
IIT-Roorkee
36+
by Careerlaucher :
XLRI - BM -> 32-33
XLRI - PMIR -> 30-31
XIM-B -> 29-30
by IMS :
XLRI - BM -> 37-40
XLRI - PMIR -> 32-35
XIM-B -> 32-35
by T.I.M.E.
XLRI - BM -> 36
XLRI - PMIR -> 33
XIM-B -> 31
Centre for Management Services (CMS) is the specialized division of AIMA undertaking testing and other management services. The testing services have been in operation since 1988 under the trademark All India Management Aptitude Testing Services (AIMATS) facilitating academia, industry and government to screen and select candidates for higher studies, recruitment, promotion etc. Hundreds of organizations and lakhs of candidates have availed these services. AIMATS has the unique distinction of being the first to be awarded with ISO 9001: 2000 Certification for the range of services under its scope.
Next MAT - Management Aptitude Test Date
01 FEBRUARY 2009 (Sunday)
(Reporting Time 9.15 AM)
