FORE School of Management PGDM Review By Madhu Tiwari

After losing interest in Engineering, MBA was the only option left for me. The admin people were stringent, plus the campus is so small that the student's line goes all the way to the gate while taking the admissions. Just 240 seats and are divided into three streams, making it all the more comfortable for students. The college follows a trimester system, and students can avail the FEP (Foreign Exchange Program). In this program, students can study a trimester in France. ESC Rennes, France, is the college partner as both colleges follows the same international business program. We also had a few students from there who were more interested in seeing India than coming to college. It wasn't easy to blend at the start as trimester was a completely new term for me. However, after a grinding first year, the second year became normal.

The academic part was unique as we used to have 20 lectures in a week. We were allowed to bunk 4, but if you miss the fifth, you better have a proper reason, or you will be punished. The course is vast, and it is tough to crack these many subjects each trimester. Also, the case study solving took long hours and one thing is for sure, if you love to sleep, and then please make peace with it for a couple of years while pursuing PGDM. Even after such chaos, I cannot begin to explain how extraordinary was our Singapore trip, which was a part of our academics. We were taken to the university over there and some industries to see how the trade channel works. It was for a week but was the best learning experience of two years program.

Again, all fingers can't be the same size, but most of them always lend a helping hand. They won't come automatically, so one has to approach them. I don't think it's a big ask, considering they never denied helping the students. Their guidance, more than anything, was more valuable as many students from engineering streams hardly had any idea about the finance part. This didn't go against us as our mathematics skill was applied, and we learned the finance formula in just five or six extra classes. All thanks to the college faculty, as they never let the commerce students have the upper hand.

If you fail to get a high paying job at the FORE School of Management means you are good for nothing. After paying such fees and studying so hard, one can’t be casual with placements. The placement cell trained us for days and days and made sure that we crack the interviews. Companies like Nestle, HUL, Amazon, and Darashaw had seen our projects beforehand as we worked on many of their projects during the course. They also sent a list to the college to send the students they selected for the interviews. Before the placement season ended, around 90% of students had the placements. Average CTC was 8-9 LPA and coming so far from the house, if I hadn't had such an offer, my parents would have killed me for sure.

The campus is so small that having an on-campus hostel was impossible. The college has a co-ed hosted at Katwarai Sarai, and the hostel was named Rajhans Hostel. The place just grew on me as my parents were ok to rent me an apartment, but I was adamant that I would stay at the hostel. The first two floors were for girls, the third floor was common space, and the above two floors were for the boys. The third floor had a mess, and the food was average. Coming from Indore, we have a very high standard in food as some students just loved the food while I found it to average.

The fact that it's a building in the name of a college campus makes it a little sad. The building had the best library as I loved going there time and again. There's not more than an acre of free space, which meant that college couldn't place a playground for us. This was sad as many of us were sports enthusiasts and had to go to clubs to play the sports. The college has a canteen but getting a plate of Chole Bhature from them took nearly 20 minutes. The break we had was of 40 minutes and out of that, the canteen took half the time. The college though has places like Saket, Vasant Vihar at an arms distance. Needless to say, the kind and quality of restaurants in these areas. Thus, the best part of the infrastructure was the location of the college.

There was no life at the campus as daily three to four lectures of 90 minutes each and just a break of 40 minutes in between made the schedule jam-packed. This is just about the lectures as there were practicals after that. The kick-ass fest was probably the only time we didn't have assignments on our minds, or our talk revolved around only assignments.