Highly-paid faculty from abroad, rigorous research and diligent career services have enabled the Indian School of Business (ISB) to top Indian B schools for the fourth year in a row in 2024 in the Financial Times Global MBA Rankings, beating the top IIMs. But an understated factor that worked in ISB’s favour in recent years has been its relatively high female student ratio.

“The entrance test for IIMs — CAT — is more favourable to engineering students, a domain where male students tend to still have an edge. This is not so for ISBs,” said Rajeev Kumra, director at TA Pai Management Institute. Also, IIMs haven’t been very successful in attracting teachers from abroad, while FT Ranking accords 3% weight to faculty, he noted.

Things are likely to be rosy for ISB in the short term. “We are likely to lead the rankings next year too,” said Siddharth Shekhar Singh, associate professor (marketing) at ISB. According to him, ISB’s ranking is better than other Indian management schools primarily due to the ability of the institute to attract the best faculty from abroad, which results in better job offers for the students.

“Also, ISB produces more A-level research than all the other Indian B-schools combined. Institutes like IIMs are facing legacy issues and have largely become teaching institutes whereas ISB faculty gets peer-reviewed pieces published in global academic journals regularly. This has helped us in attracting faculty from across the world, which is not the case with IIMs,” said Singh.

The FT Rankings is based on 22 parameters, each with a certain weight. Salary and salary increase carry the highest points followed by research.

Experts said that ISB could be working backwards to score better than IIMs. For instance, ISB focuses on inducting more female students. The 2024 batch of post graduate programme in management comprises 40% female students as compared to 23% in the 2023-25 batch of IIM Ahmedabad and 32% in the similar batch of IIM Bangalore. Female students, as a category, carry 3% weight in FT rankings.

A professor at ISB who didn’t wish to be identified said that one out of two professors at ISB are from the US, and the institute is the top choice for faculty because of its compensation standards matching that of Ivy League colleges in the US.

“The salary offered at ISB faculty ranges from `1.5 crore to `4 crore annually. In comparison, the base salary at IIMs are pretty low, through they earn also from executive programmes,” a source said. The pay scale for a top-grade professor stands at `1.8-2.2 lakh/per month in IIM Ahmedabad.

Of course, ISB students get relatively lower salary packages than their counterparts at top IIMs, but the institute has attracted top-notch placement opportunities. For instance, nearly 15% of the job offers in 2023 placements comprised leadership and general management roles. In the FT Rankings, career progress rank, a parameter assessing the change in the level of seniority now as compared to the stint prior to MBA, carries 3% weight.

In 2023 placements, the average salary for PGP class at IIM Bangalore, IIM Ahmedabad and ISB stood at `35.31 lakhs per annum, `34.36 LPA and `34.21 LPA, respectively.

“For me, the brand, network of alumni and quality of placements are the key differentiators. There’s certainly a strong appetite for quality management schools like ISB,” said Sonal Agrawal, managing partner (India) at executive search firm Accord.