Having graduated from IIT Bombay and taken CAT in haste, I indeed was sceptical about joining IIM Ranchi. I figured, notwithstanding leading a smooth life filled with experiences from top established institutions did teach me 'maintenance' but not 'building from scratch'. It's very easy to facilitate status quos than evolve something completely alien. This is when I realized that I needed to make and learn new things - new initiatives, new memories, new institutions, pretty much new everything.
In a short span of time, IIM Ranchi has inestimably created its value owing much of its success to the students, faculty, and a motivated staff. From non-availability of land to corporate prejudices in travelling to Ranchi, we have defied all odds as witnessed through various forms of metrics available. There is unquestionably a logical affinity towards objective assessment, for the scientific reasoning we patronize, but it fails to account the degree of genuine circumstantial difficulties one overcame.
The most egoistic appeal of IIM Ranchi remains its simplicity. Every college can boast of infrastructure, alumni base, networks, faculty etc, but all is redundant without a will to work. The faculty and staff here are immensely helpful in both professional and personal problems, sometimes going out of their mandated ways. This zealous culture cultivating within the realms of IIM Ranchi is what I cherish and feel proud about.
I would like to dwell on my first-hand experiences from the time I stepped foot at IIM Ranchi. The whole administration and academic area reside within the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting building of Jharkhand. The hostel is around 8kms or a 25min college bus ride far from our college premises. Initially, we were unrelentingly unhappy about losing travel time. But spare the cribs!! Couldn't we put that time to productive use through something, for example, reading. We started enjoying it only after we learned to adapt without compromising our priorities.
As perspective be, a problem taught us to respond than react to it (The Cockroach Theory). As the pictures testify, our hostel is located within the greens of fields and the calmness of weathers. The single rooms are quite spacious and the housekeeping is vigilant. The weather is brilliant year-round and there are incessant notifications about cultural/literary/sports activities, the timings of which hysterically are not constrained to exam seasons.
Sheikh Bhikhari (Khelgaon) Stadium, which hosted the 2011 National Games, is substantiating enough to give a picture of the ‘state-of-the-art’ facilities we have access to. From winning prestigious competitions like Mahindra War-room twice, Deloitte Maverick, CFA Research challenge (Zonal) and others, competing with students from all the prestigious IIMs and all manifesting in a brief period since our inception, is evidence to the quality of students and pedagogic capabilities of our faculties.
The students here are very friendly and it's really hard to believe that the complete student affairs (including operational stuff - bus schedules, mess work etc) are managed wholly by students themselves. And much of our curriculum equips us with tools to do it so efficiently. We do what we learn not the other way round. Isn't that better than industry exposure?
There is one thing that every MBA aspirant and every student must understand. A B-school doesn't require humongous acres of land to serve its core purpose – churning efficient managers. What it requires is a talented human capital equipped with adequate resources. Jumping to the academic front, the pedagogy is different in terms of course content and diversity. We have quality guest faculties visiting our campus. The internal faculty is decent having some exceptionally good teachers pertaining to all areas. We are the only IIM offering a full-fledged course in Human Resource Management (HRM). Guess, this explains our extremely good people skills.
Overall I would say that IIM Ranchi definitely is in the lead if the students have a keen motivation to grow by learning and not the other way round.
“Not never falling, but rising every time we fall - Our glory”