MBA Institutes are now ready to release the admission lists for academic session 2010-12. Serious MBA aspirants will soon have many offers. That’s a problem of plenty! ‘How to choose the right B-school?’ is the most important question that strikes the mind of the students.

MBAUniverse.com is here to help. Over the next few weeks we will be publishing a special series of interviews, columns and expert Q&A on this topic. Sreetama Dutta, senior correspondent, MBAUniverse.com is coordinating this series.

To kick off, Sidharth Balakrishna, an alumnus of IIM Calcutta, and author of 'An Introduction to CAT-Tips from an IIM Alumnus' (published by Pearson Education), shares his mantras.

The six factors for choosing the right B-school
By Sidharth Balakrishna

There is a mix of different factors that decide the merit of a B-school. Some of these are:

1. Placements: Make sure that the institute offers credible campus placements. Do not look only at salaries. Look also at the number, nature, reputation and variety of companies that come to campus for placements. This is because if you wish to specialize in a particular stream and work in that field (example: marketing or finance), then there should be a sufficient number of reputed companies in that field that recruit form campus.

One caveat here: Try and verify the placement data/ salary figures that various schools claim from independent sources/ past students of that Business school!

2. Quality of faculty: Check whether the Business school has renowned full-time qualified faculty. Try and check if the faculty that the Business school claims to have are actually full-time ones and not mere ad-hoc visiting faculty/ guest lecturers who may not be available at all times for the students.

3. Quality of students: This is extremely important. Many ex-students of top B-schools, including yours truly, when asked as to where/ from whom they learnt the most point to their colleagues rather than the institution itself. Fellow students of high academic calibre, varied interests and diverse backgrounds contribute a lot to each other’s personal development.

4. Opportunities for doing internships and ‘live’ projects: Factors such as the location of the B-school and industry partnerships help in ensuring that students get to do interesting and knowledge-enhancing internships and ‘live’ projects with reputed companies. These projects will help in your obtaining your final placement as well.

5. Infrastructure: Good management institutes should offer the basic infrastructure in place to aid in disseminating knowledge and ensuring that students are well-versed in modern- day management tools. A well equipped computer centre, libraries, projectors, seminar rooms for guest lectures etc are a must. Once again, it is a good idea to verify all this rather than merely rely on the institute’s website or marketing brochure. Speak to alumni of the B-school or try to visit it yourself.

6. Guest lecturers (Visiting Faculty and Company executives): Check out the kind of guest lectures at the institute that you are thinking of joining. This and the quality of internships/ ‘live projects’, as mentioned earlier, could be very good indicators of the kind of placement opportunities available to students.