SOIL Institute of Management Review By Riya Tomar

SOIL Gurgaon is an example of modern B-School as not the infrastructure but even the academic system and other things also look like the things of the future. Academics here were sorted, faculties were good, but what next? It's the placement's part where I was a little disappointed because the academics revolve around industrial training and still have a placement percentage of 70-odd is low. When I compare B-Schools, I see the likes of FMS, MDI, XLRI, and others and one thing that they have in common is 100% placements. SOIL charges more than them and also promises the best of placements. However, placements go to them who pass many challenges that are being thrown to them every single day at SOIL. The Institute has taken a step up in enhancing its education and for that, I will be its biggest cheerleader. The campus life never stagnated here because we would see faces and move on as everyone had their tasks cut out for the day even before they reached the College. So, overall, led quite a challenging life at SOIL as there was a lot more to do in the nick of time.

Firstly, here it is not like mid-semesters or end semesters as module papers were to be solved. Practicals carried a lot of weightage and practicals here were real corporate projects that were assigned directly from the corporate houses. So, the education part was the greenest grass of the Institute. Education here took me to hell and back because it didn't end. I thought, ok, I am done, but no, the Institute couldn't bear that because an industrial visit every second week and then the project submissions on deadline and presentations twice in a week. SOIL is for those who can keep up or rather step up because you will be doing two years of studies in a year.

The new wind that is blowing has ensured one thing for sure. Institutes today spend heavily on getting the best people on board and SOIL has done no different. Many faculties who passed out from Oxford, and other such Colleges were the ones who taught us. How to manage the pace and how to manage the workload were the biggest lessons that I took from them. Module discussion and PPT presentations were closely observed by them as our tails were always on the firing line of their reach.

Companies like Hero Moto Corp, Maruti, Amazon, and others were the ones who awarded us projects, and which I did wholeheartedly. Everyone, in general, did so and most students were placed in such companies. Packages worth 8-10 lakhs were quite common here, but the grass turned into ashes for many as only 7 out of 10 could get placed. Just like everything, the placements also happened so rapidly that we didn't even have that extra second or chance to re-appear again for the interviews. Just like everything else, placements are challenging here because there are no friendships at SOIL, because dare you, if you share your projects with others as they might be the one who might take away the job that you deserved.

The College isn't that big, at least the Gurgaon campus where our course was conducted, so having a hostel in the campus was beyond reach. Also, most students are from Delhi-NCR and the College at least has arranged buses to drop students home. Only 20% of the crowd was students who came from far off, as most students didn't even need any hostel services.

The city's most happening area, HUDA city center, was close to the SOIL Gurugram campus. Infrastructure in one word is elite, as the building had an architect that was laced with all the latest technology. In course of time, almost every B-School will take a leaf out of the SOIL book on how to build infrastructure. Infrastructure was an explosion of technology because of one word for the computer lab as it only had MAC PCs. Infrastructure was comprised of a great canteen, which we always referred to as Café, and a recreational room that had sports facilities like never seen before.

My campus life review is on the things I did at the campus because otherwise, it becomes a cop-out where you want to pack seven best things and do a review on that. I need one concession in my review and I will explain why for a specific reason. If one gets a great placement, campus life becomes great, and if one doesn't, then it looks bad. My experience with placement was bad, so I am rating my campus life as average, but there were things that I did which I know I wouldn't have otherwise. By otherwise I mean many great things like interacting with business experts, learning or taking a leaf out of the bags of people where I see myself in the future. So, many opportunities were provided at SOIL, it's that placement challenge was something where I failed miserably.