It has taken the current slump in MBA hiring for Indian business schools and their students to realise that a recession is not something that happens to other people in other countries. It is perhaps the first April when most Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) haven’t yet declared their placement processes closed, grappling with 5-10% unplaced students from 300+ class-sizes as they are.

With this in the backdrop, the PaGaLGuY B-school Rankings 2013, participated in by 6,824 respondents who recorded their most preferred b-schools in our CommunityRank methodology-driven rankings survey between the months of December 2012 and February 2013, reflects the deeply conservative mood among MBA applicants and students.

Two things stand out in the PaGaLGuY B-schools Rankings 2013 results,

1. Rankings of b-schools have swung by numbers larger than anything we’ve seen before
2. Old and government-owned brand names (IIMs, IITs, TISS, etc) have gained the maximum ranks
3. The newest IIMs have swung up by nearly a dozen ranks each

When the times turn bad, people fall back on the old and safe brands, and this sentiment is sprinkled throughout this year’s rankings. To provide a more balanced perspective of a b-school’s perception amidst the drastic rank swings, we have also show the two-year average of each b-school’s rank between this and the previous year.

>>> Click here to view the complete PaGaLGuY Rankings 2013

Here are the Top 10 B-schools from the 2013 rankings.

The two biggest changes in the Top 10 this year is the kicking out of the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad and Mohali from rank 5 last year to rank 12 this year, and the entry of SP Jain, Mumbai at number 10.

Baffled by ISB Hyderabad’s dramatic fall in the rankings, we put the question out to our community last week and gathered the following reasons for people having voted for the premier b-school this way,

1. The job market for experienced one-year MBAs is limited and by stretching its class size beyond 700, the school is trying to milk the idea beyond its worth.
2. Unlike Hyderabad, the second campus at Mohali is located in one of the blind spots of corporate India, which makes it only a tad better off than some of the ridiculous locations of the new IIMs.
3. The word-of-mouth about ISB graduates’ placements fails to impress, and the lack of a placement report until now does not help quell the rumours any.

TISS Mumbai and IIM Shillong too have gained significantly in the 2013 rankings, with the latter having broken into the Top 20 six years after having been founded.

Almost as if a proof to demolish apprehensions that perceptions in the PaGaLGuY B-school Rankings are driven by the conversations and media coverage of schools on the PaGaLGuY Forums, the Department of Management Studies (DMS), IIT Delhi actually climbed a rank up despite this.

Do pour in with your observations from the rankings and insights that you think we missed. While discussing it, be nice to each other and be good people :).