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Is IIM Kozhikode lying in its placement report? The answer is NO

Monday, March 21st, 2016

I think IIM Kozhikode is lying not lying in its placement report.

I might be was wrong about this and I apologize. I have heard about B-schools dressing up their placement reports but this seems extremely unlikely to me. Please note that I am not trying to expose anyone here but just trying to figure out the math behind it. The errors / discrepancies in data were there because the IIM-K report was talking about 370 offers made to 360 possible students. I got the data given below from the IIM Kozhikode website. You can download the PDF of IIM-K placements yourself.

On page 3, you can see that the total number of students is 360.
On page 4, you can see that the average salary is 17.1 LPA
Rest of the data is captured from this screenshot of page 5 given below.

The data given below is invalid because it is using offers instead of students

Now, let’s look at this data a little more closely
Students     Avg Sal     Total Salary
1 – 25       29.94     748.5
1 – 50       25.93     1296.5
1 – 100     22.89     2289
1 – 150     20.87     3130.5
1 – 200     19.51     3902
1 – 250     18.47     4617.5
1 – 300     17.53     5259
1 – 360     17.10     6156

Now, we can use the above data to calculate the total salary and hence the average salary in each band as given below.
Students      Total Salary   Average Salary
1 to 25          748.5         29.94
26 to 50        548            21.92
51 to 100       992.5        19.85
101 to 150     841.5        16.83
151 to 200     771.5        15.43
201 to 250     715.5        14.31
251 to 300     641.5        12.83
301 to 360     897           14.95

The average salary of the bottom 60 students is coming out to be more than the average salary of students above them

You can download the excel that I have used for these calculations.

The difference between students / offers was pointed out by an IIM-K alumnus

I request to share this on Facebook so that more people can put their heads on solving this. If you are planning to join a B-school next year, do have a look at our online CAT coaching course.

Update from IIM Kozhikode

Varsha Murali, a member of the placement committee at IIM-K, just called me up. She offered me an explanation over the phone that I was not able to understand. She told me that the official statement would come up tomorrow morning. As soon as I get that, I will put it up on the blog as well.

Once again – I will like to apologize in advance because I know I am making a mistake somewhere and a college like IIM-K would not fudge data.

Plausible reasons from site visitors / Facebook suggestions

1. One of the possible explanations is that there is a difference between students and offers. That might lead to the discrepancies. If that is the case the entire calculations shown above are wrong and redundant. There is a difference between Offers and Students (as per official reports). And since we do not know the average of 370 offers, we can not come up with the average salary calculations.
2. Another reason that has not all students were placed / opted for placements / eligible for placements. Although that is not mentioned in the official report but that could also explain it.