The Himalayan IIM

Admission is done on the basis of CAT scores, WAT and PI. A 95+ percentile is good enough for a general candidate to be eligible for admissions. The faculty, course content and mentorship is at par will any other IIM. There are a ton of opportunities to learn, research and explore your skills through clubs, committees and various collaboration opportunities with Professors. There are hundreds of case study competitions and quizzes going on around the year. The MBA course fee is Rs1200000 for two years full-time program. The college is well known for marketing and offers a lot of opportunities in the specialisation during the summer and final placements. Many renowned companies like Accenture, Deloitte along with budding ed-tech companies like BYJU's come to the campus for recruitment. The average package offered is around 12.5 lakhs with almost a quarter of the batch bagging salaries of more than 16 LPA. You can check the reports on the official website of IIM Sirmaur.

I have always been good at mathematics and thus was inclined towards analytics from the beginning of my course. The faculty here is good, some of them are excellent. We don't have permanent on-campus faculties for all the subjects so there are a few visiting faculties from other IIMs and IIFT to cover some subjects. Faculties are highly qualified and some have a PhD in their respective fields. The case-based teaching methodology is followed by faculties. The evaluation points are decided by the respective subject faculty, which include quizzes, assignments and other things. There are mid-term and end-term exams for each term. The papers are mostly case-based and it is essential that one is thorough with things discussed in the class and extra readings to score well in the exams. Relative grading makes things more competitive.

The majority of the opportunities were in the marketing and sales department, followed by opportunities in finance, consulting, analytics and operations. Companies recruiting include Aditya Birla, Bajaj Allianz, ICICI Bank, Powerhouse and many startups.

The summer placements start from the month of November after Term 1 and all the students get placed by January. The final placements is also a rolling process that starts during Term 5. The average package is around 12.5 LPA and about a quarter of a batch bagged a packaged of more than 16 LPA. The college has a record of 100% placements.

The scholarship is offered to economically weaker students on a merit basis. Fees are hiked for every batch as it's a baby IIM. The strength of the batch for next year is also supposed to increase by 100. For the summer internship, I got placed in an ed-tech startup in Bengaluru with a stipend of 40K. Stipends have taken a hit due to the COVID situation.

The annual fest of IIM Sirmaur is Sierra. There are a lot of sports, cultural and business competitions along with sessions from industry experts. The library has a lot of good books and is open 24*7. Every IIM is student-run. There are clubs for marketing, finance, consulting, operations, analytics, art and music and various more. Student committees include the student council, academic council along with mess, training and development, sports, cultural, CSR and ESBS committee.

Hostel facilities are decent with extremely good mess service. Hot water, room cleaning, washing machines to wash clothes and other basic amenities are provided. There's a variety of food offered with both vegetarian and non-vegetarian options. Due to the pandemic, students have just started to board the hostels but the college and industrial committee students have done a good job to ensure everyone's safety.

Topics for WAT were different for each batch of students, ranging from abstract to current affairs. I prepared for this round by reading magazine and newspaper articles. Interviewers asked me about myself, my achievements, internships, undergraduate degree subjects. They asked some situation reaction questions and asked why I wanted to pursue an MBA.