About

Apart from the ‘hard’ skills, B-schools must impart business leaders with humility, humanity, empathy and humour. Often two questions posed by students in higher education, about to embark upon a corporate career, are these: “Why do blue-chip companies never/rarely consider Tier 2 institutions for recruitment?” And, “Are graduates from the top B-schools really much better than us (Tier 2 schools)?” Important questions both. Blue-chip companies going to only Tier 1 institutions could be attributed to two primary reasons: first, matching external branding of the blue-chip recruiting organisation with the stock pool of recruits in equally well-known and pedigreed institutions. And, second, rigour. The first level of rigour is the scores obtained by the top ranked institutions’ students in a very tough entrance examination followed by an equally demanding personal interview. The second level is the extremely demanding work and study schedules at such institutions. Tier 2 schools shy away from both rigours. But are they really better? This is trickier. There are examples of students from Tier 1 B-schools not always being great leaders and there have been great business leaders from lesser known schools too. However, pro-rata, the incidence of CEOs from B-schools is skewed in favour of the top schools.