Calcutta Business School PGDM Review By Shail Singh

Enrolling in CBS Kolkata was not on my list, but my great scores found me looking up this college. And yes, it does have the old name Calcutta, long after it has been changed to ‘Kolkata.’ CBS ranks as one of the best B-schools in Kolkata that already has a lot of top colleges. It is known to have great infrastructure and other facilities that make it desirable for a student who will spend some of his formative years in this college. They follow the AICTE module for their curriculum. And placements are ok, but CBS have linkages with various foreign universities. This collaboration has helped further studies and research, as this college fulfils this aspect. The college happened to have an amazing grading, and I was pretty much chuffed to get into a college with so many citations. The placements are good and close to one hundred percent. It was lovely being in the mix of such a beautiful college for two years.

Since this college is highly ranked among the B-schools, you will surely feel the pressure of academics. And the students are, in a way, forced to live up to the expectations. The college made sure that academics were at the forefront and extracurricular activities were not as much. Everything was taught from the global perspective, enabling us to think big and understand how businesses have to grow financially, economically, and strategically. The curriculum and the extra referential knowledge that we gained enabled hone our decision-making abilities and learn the nuance of businesses better. PGDM here means shedding few extra hours daily so that we can keep up with the course otherwise, once we lagged behind, we will stay behind for long.

The faculty were considerate and knew that we also needed to rejuvenate and made sure that breaks gave us to come back and perform better. They were encouraging and told us to choose our specializations carefully and see if we could follow through with them with passion. Many of them have vast experiences in their respective fields, giving us the impetus to implore them more and gain knowledge through their discourses. They allowed us to read other books and find different references for our subject so that our knowledge widened. We were happy that the professors weren’t harsh but respected our opinions. Their teaching astute though needs no hunches because they were all pro in their task.

CBS Kolkata placements are good, some of the big corporate visit our company, and fellow students have been offered a fairly great package for being hired. Though Calcutta Business School doesn’t’ figure in the top 100 B-schools, it still does have good placement opportunities for students as nearly all of us were placed. We also get a wide choice of companies, such as software companies, MNCs, Audit firms etc., who want to hire from this business school. ITC, Nestle, and other big FMCG names through rules the placements as they offered the best placements in our year.

Calcutta Business School hostels were inside the campus, and boys and girls stayed in one building. Since students from far off found commuting difficult, staying back at the hostel seemed much more convenient. It was a single-room hostel allowing each one the freedom to live as they wanted. I was never fond of the sharing system; these rooms enabled privacy, and you could study and sleep in peace. There was recreation and a library in the administrative building next to the hostel, so you could chill out in the hostel when you had nothing to do. The meals of the hostel usually need not be mentioned, but these meals were actually eaten and were, in fact, good.

The place was nice, homely, and not a posh location like most B-schools show in their prospectus. The security system needs to be revamped, though not a big campus, the facilities were good, however, not great. The campus had great greenery and looked great for taking a walk around when you had nothing to do but that was rare as we all had lots to study and prepare our assignments for evaluation to get internal marks. The classroom had air conditioners, which was a great respite during summers. Sometimes you could go and check out IIM Kolkata, which happened to be only 15 minutes away. However, I preferred not to, as I would envy students there.

The events and fests were added as part of the curriculum. Still, they happened to be not so much fun as nobody had time to prepare as there were projects and assignments, final exams and other academic worries that remained. Only a handful turned up, and it was usually a dull show. The cultural activities took a back seat, and only academics were prioritized at CBS. Luckily I enjoyed enough during my time in IPER and therefore missing out on a great campus life at CBS didn’t haunt me.