International School of Management Excellence PGDM Review By Renu Sharma

ISME, Bangalore was great. Great because the college is unique in many senses. The admission process was simpler than many. You can process everything online and once the process is done, you just have to submit the cheque and once the cheque is cleared, you get your admit card. The fees was reasonable as MBA colleges or B-Schools today have over priced themselves. ISME is still reasonable considering the kind of facilities and teaching that they provide. Providing in-depth knowledge of each and every subject was taken care by the faculties. Hostel was great but the food has to be managed. The professors have one on one discussion with the student so that they can identify your weak and strong areas. Assignments and projects were given in a way that it will make you learn how to handle pressure situations. For placements one has to be on their toes because placements were 100% but getting the best placement required some skills and pushovers.

PGDM is an extended version of BBA with more practical of course. I was doing specialization in marketing so most of our time was spent off-campus. Going for projects and doing live assignments was our main task. The college has made marketing students marketing goons as the techniques and methods that we learned at college were out of the box. The companies that gave us projects took our report card from the college and whatever weakness that we had was rectified during internships. Am internship of 6 weeks was compulsory at ISME.

Faculties were great as they didn’t just have the degrees but the right background to train us as per industry needs. Faculty used to co-ordinate directly to the companies and whoever was weak they would take a personal session with them. Selling Apples is different and selling oranges is different. Likewise, the college used to give us projects based on various industries and after 3-4 such projects the faculty would know what are we good at and they build on student’s strength. Faculty played huge role in placements too as their feedback was taken by the recruiters and they took personal guarantee of students.

The myth that marketing students gets job easily is nothing but a myth. I did over 12 projects in two years and on the merit of that I got placed with one of the leading insurance companies in India. There were many large corporate of various sectors but the companies that have come have already have their desired students on their mind. All the marketing students did projects for various companies and the companies that offered us jobs were the ones with whom we did internship or did projects for. Marketing students' package was slightly higher than that of other specializations. It was understandable why students of other domain were envy of us. The average package overall of PGDM was around 6 Lakhs but for marketing it was 7.5 lakhs.

Like IIMs or any other top institutes in India, ISME’s PGDM was also a residential program. All the students pursuing PGDM had to stay at the hostels that were great. The room size was average but bed and furniture was world class. The walls also had nice paint rather than plain white putty. One complaint that a North Indian student will always have is the food. A complete south Indian menu on the card almost daily. Luckily the college canteen had few North Indian cuisines but the canteen would shut down at 7 pm so a lunch was the only option at the canteen. For dinner, had to eat whatever that was available at the mess.

The classrooms were known as knowledge centre had biometrics for attendance. The classrooms had audio video enabled LED projectors for enhanced learning. The ISME library was digitized and students of ISME had access to many other decorated libraries like that of IIM-Bangalore and others. The cafeteria was named BuzziBuz used to give quick meals and had the seating capacity of over 150 students simultaneously. There was a small courtyard at the side of admin building and that was the place where we would come out during breaks from the classes. The basketball court was the busiest area of the campus which more often than not would turn into a volleyball court. Other sporting facilities includes a badminton court and a table tennis table.

Life at the campus was amazing as staying inside a modern smart campus will make sure that students would hardly walk out. The guys did but the girl’s hostel was overly active as our green room and common area was always buzzing. The warden would come and warn but who cared as we knew that this time will never come back and like many others, I also made the most of my campus life.