KIIT School of Management BBA Review By Rashmi Joshi

I was my class topper in 12th but my parents refused to send me away and I had to get admissions at one of the best Colleges in my hometown, Bhubaneswar and that is KIIT School of Management. The College offers BBA, MBA, and Phd programs. The strength of the College is comparatively low but the faculties are in numbers. In Eastern India, KSOM is looked upon as one of the hottest prospects for doing management studies, be it BBA or MBA. Education at times was like scratching my head because we were given as many assignments as the MBA students were. I understand we have to solve the case studies as a part of the program and also have to take care of our practicals but unwanted and unnecessary things always annoy me. So, the travesty was that for a few days I was quite annoyed at the College. Yet, being a little critical, I have to be soft hearted as well because at KSOM, I learned a lot of things and understood all the acumen of management studies.

It was a roller coaster ride where the ride is slow at the start and once the pressure mounts, it comes down to make us wet. Yes, Bhubaneswar has humidity all around the year so getting wet was common, but getting wet with pressure in the classrooms was a whole new dimension added to studies at KSOM. One idiomatic expression for academics here is illuminator, as everything went in highlights because the course they have made is so rigorous that completing that in classrooms was not possible. We had to do a lot of self-study and classes that were supposed to end by 5 pm sometimes went till 7 pm. The College used to inform our parents about the same as in eastern part of India, 7 pm is considered as night. Sad but it’s a trivia that I hope everyone should know.

I think the College should have done away with this part because if English is a skill, then management students have no choice but to be adept in it. Luckily one of our professors was adamant about it because he told us that henceforth all the entrance that we will be appearing our English vocabulary and speaking skills will matter a lot. He trained us for that on his personal capacity because the College and other faculties were quite happy communicating in Oriya as few of the outsiders too: learned Oriya in a while. So, they took the course seriously but not worked on our skillset which were the base of all the further entrances that we gave.

There’s a vast difference between BBA and KIIT MBA Placement. Not half the BBA students received any placements while over 80% of MBA students were placed through campus. The placement drive was carried on simultaneously and it was the banks that ruled the placement drive. The slogan of the placements was have money on your mind and your mind on money but after all, my heart and soul into the studies and thinking about the money that I may receive after graduation were shattered as I wasn’t placed even after appearing for as many as 15 interviews. Maybe it was fault in my stars because even though I was little, there were few students from BBA who had placements.

There were a couple of girl’s hostels at the campus as one had single seater rooms and the other one had double and triple sharing rooms. The hostel building was small as all in all, I guess the capacity of both the hostels was not over 250. 25-30 rooms in each hostel were there. There were three boy’s hostels I guess and even they were the same size. Most students were from Bhubaneswar only, so increasing the hostel capacity would have anyways made no sense. So, I am happy with the overall hostel facility of the campus.

The campus is big and some construction work was on, as few more buildings are getting constructed. While I was studying there were two academic blocks but because MBA has too many streams, they are in the process of getting a new building ready to increase the intake. There are around 6-7 Colleges in the same campus, and every building was built in accordance. The rock garden of the campus was also the selfie point though there weren’t as many selfies taken in those days. The main-block and the academic-block were among the most developed buildings of the city. The College canteen was small but was always seen in tidy condition. There was a football ground as football is more popular than cricket in this part of India.

The campus life wasn’t that happening in big cities but even our two-days event at the Colosseum was amazing. Those were the only days when nobody commented on what we were wearing. On other days uniform was compulsory and therefore, students were seen dressed their best for the event. Apart from that there were some small or big events organized at the College every month.