An Honest Experience

There are several entrance exams like CAT, XAT, GMAT, NMAT, and CMAT that K J Somaiya Institute of Management accepts as a part of its MBA program. So, the cut-off varies for all these exams every year considering several factors. Last year the cutoff for CAT was 85+ percentile, for XAT it was 80+ percentile and for NMAT you need to have a score of 225/360 to proceed to the next stage of the admission process. The application form can be found at simsr.somaiya.edu/en and it costs about Rs 3000. A thing to note is you have to separately apply for the application form once you successfully clear your entrance exams. Last year the second stage was a Case Analysis round followed by a Personal Interview which is the final round of the admission process. An improvement I would like to see this year is there should be transparency in the Waitlist movement which enables the aspirants to make informed decisions going forward and avoid a lot of confusion.

So as a finance enthusiast I decided to pursue MBA in Financial Services. So MBA in FS is a niche course that is designed in such a way that you will start learning the core aspects of Finance right from your second trimester. The first trimester is the same for every specialization but going forward specific subjects pertaining to specific specialization are taught in a very lucid manner. There are various permanent faculties in our college that cater to the doubts and learnings of every student and talking about their qualification almost all the professors have relevant industry experience of several years prior teaching. You can interact with the faculties during class hours as well as beyond the class hours also. K J follows a block timetable and a trimester system. The term exams were very time conducted in an efficient manner and it requires theoretical as well as practical knowledge to pass the end term exams.

For the summer internship, 115 companies visited the campus so far. The highest stipend offered is 90k per month and the average stipend is 21k per month as of now. A lot of prestigious companies come to the campus for the summer internship process and provide students with various roles in the domain of Finance, Marketing, Operations, Analytics, and HR.

For the first-year students, the companies start coming in the first trimester itself for providing internship opportunities. A lot of companies also offers Live Project opportunity for the students so they can gain corporate experience along with their MBA. Almost all the students get a summer internship opportunity as companies keep coming throughout the year. For the final placements, the companies start coming from the fourth trimester. Prominent recruiters like JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, ITC, Nestle, Accenture, Infosys, Salesforce, Arcesium, HSBC, and many more come to the campus for providing opportunities in various domains like Finance, Marketing, Operations, Analytics, HR, etc. Almost 98% of the final year batch got placed with the highest offer being around 26-28 LPA and the average being around 11 LPA. More than 80% of the batch got summer internship offers with the highest being 90K per month and the average being 21k per month.

The fees for the entire two years of course come around 16 lakhs barring the hostel and mess fees. The hostel and mess fees come to around 4.5 lakhs for two years. There are several scholarships that are provided to the students based on financial status, based on merit and many more. The relevant students can apply for these scholarships and the fee waiver varies from 10% to 40-50% of the entire course fees based on several factors. I got an internship offer from HOC, a Mumbai-based startup for 2 months for total compensation of Rs 40,000.

The campus is very big and is lush green which is rarely found in Mumbai. There are 25-30 different committees and clubs. One can join a club based on his interest and hobbies. K J has a huge library where you will find thousands of books, Journals and it also has a Bloomberg setup which is very helpful for Finance students. The annual feast of the college is Melange and it is conducted in the month of February. Apart from the annual fest, there are fests conducted every month organized by different committees throughout the year. The college has a running track, tennis court and many more facilities available for its students.

Once you clear the criteria for different entrance exams, the second round is a Case-based Analysis followed by a Personal Interview which is the final stage of the admission process. In the Case Analysis round, you will be given a live case with some questions at the end. You will be given some time to read and understand the case and then you have to present your understanding of the case to the panel members. Roughly it goes for around 30 mins where the panel interacts with the aspirants on the case. The Personal Interview tests your overall knowledge about different topics and it varies from person to person depending on the profile of the individual.