I came across ISB when I visited that place with a friend of mine who has a brother studying there. It has got a sprawling campus with all the state-of-the-art facilities.Once you enter the institute the only thing Indian about it seems to be it’s Location.
ISB has recently shot up in the media because of the exorbitant pay packages gathered by their students and people conclude that they are a better lot than produced by the IIMs. This is not entirely true.There are a lot of differences between ISB and IIMs.
ISB is strictly for students with work experience(3 years or more) whereas almost 65-70% of student intake of IIMs are freshers. This is the main reason that MBA in ISB is a much low stress affair with about 4-5 hours of classes for 5 days a week. Compare this to the atmosphere in IIMs where the students get only 5-6 hours of sleep on an average daily basis.That is because they have to complete so many assignments .This is required to inculcate the time management and stress management practices into the students majority of whom are freshers.The faculty at ISB has no such worries as they know the students coming there have a fair amount of knowledge of the corporate atmosphere and it’s demands and hence there is no need to overtax them just for the heck of it.
The biggest advantage of ISB is that it has tie-ups with Bigwigs like Wharton, Kelloggs and others which are great value-addition to the CV of the pass-outs.
Getting into ISB is definitely easier than getting into IIM-A as GMAT doesn’t consider relative scores as happens in CAT.Besides that if you consider the number of students aspiring for these institutes you will get the point.
The only Disadvantage that ISB has is it’s tuition fees are almost 6-7 times that of the IIMs and more than double of any other institute in India.But as it’s a one year course there it’s definitely worth it.
Overall I would say ISB definitely is a top-rung college to study in.