SOIL Institute of Management Review By Yashwardhan Jaiswal

My experiences are based on experiences of the year I spent at SOIL. An extension of an MBA that a kind of person likes can vary, but my job was to finish the course at the earliest to get started working. The PGP Business leadership program here was an unknown entity until one of my friends who joined here asked me to apply here. The PGP program here is within the confines, of course, a balanced program that can help students go out and kill it. So that is something that students applying should keep in mind. In all fairness, I have ended my review numbers barring placements, so it becomes fair for one to understand how SOIL goes about its business. I have made the assumption that even top MBA Colleges give placements around 10-20 lakhs and SOIL also provides placements in that bracket. Thus, saving a year and getting the same facilities, courses, and placements at SOIL makes it an ideal choice to do post-graduation.

To get an idea of how academics are done at most of the B-Schools, excuse me if I don't complain because in a year, we did all the training, studies, and internships that students doing full-time MBA of two years does. Academics here gave me a mountain of experience and knowledge but believe me, SOIL's education and course curriculum are superior to that of MDI or Christ because I had friends at both these Colleges and they envied me big time for joining an Institute better than theirs. Academics here were in the vicinity of any good B-School, as I enjoyed the academics here, like all the events of the College as College allowed me enough time to also find time for the things that I loved doing.

Faculties were our fantastic partners because the relationship between faculties and students here was a partnership with no limit table. They finished all modules and we were given about time to finish the assignments and that isn't the worst-case scenario for a student. So, I was happy with my choice of College that I chose because the student and the faculty relationship determine most of the things during the academic career of a student. However, the number of faculty was less as there weren't many choices when it came to approaching them. The main faculty's door was knocked, but thankfully they obliged with all the help that we needed.

Placements here were excellent as the College didn't have to do different things to get students placed. Students were skilled and all thanks to the College and placement cell department for that. A dash of enthusiasm was seen not only among the students but the College when students were getting placed one after the other. Placements complemented very well with the academics because we were made to work quite hard and if the placements were poor, the whole scenario would have changed. Average placements were around 8 lakhs and some students managed to get placements in the range of 20 lakhs.

I looked around and saw that the private hostel with whom the College has a tie-up isn't great. Thus, I looked around areas near the College and I was spoilt for choices. Apartments that are dreamy were available for students at a reasonable price. Luckily, the property prices in Gurgaon haven't shot up like they are in Bangalore and Mumbai and therefore a 2 BHK luxurious apartment in sector 40 can be availed at a rent of 12-15k. I stayed with one of my friends and traveling 2 kilometers to the College daily looked like a cake walk because the area in which the College is located is stunning.

The Gurugram campus which offered our course was a tiny kitty with all the wealth in it. Campus had the best set of classrooms as most of our time was spent in that. I thought in many ways that a small campus with fewer students is actually a better way than having a large campus accommodating too many courses. Our campus had a nice auditorium, a fully equipped library and recreational facilities that made me younger by a year or so. Infrastructure of SOIL to me was the biggest revelation because all the fees that they charged was spent for developing and maintaining the infrastructure that SOIL had.

With campus life, you look at extracurricular activities as much as you look at academics. However, in my style of campus life, I look at academics and co-curricular activities to be the most versatile thing. Classes can be postponed to accommodate other activities and SOIL did that many times. The campus life here played in two gears, as when academics were going strong there was no stopping it; and once the party mode is on, then forgets about all the lectures and assignments and concentrates only on the events of the College.