IIMC - Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata - Course & Fees Details

In my opinion, the IIM APDS is just an average course. ISB Hyderabad course is much better. It’s better to do Data Science courses from technical universities rather than Management colleges like IIM. Also, the IIM APDS course is quite expensive and more like a BA course than Data Science. It focuses more on Business Mathematics/ Business case study discussion than how to explore a data set.

ISBs course best among these courses because it has all the things that are required:

• Brand

• Faculty

• Industry Connect

• Curriculum

• Alumni

Also this course has more time for all the subjects and capstone projects too. The only drawback is the high fees. 

My brother is in IIM Calcutta and over the period of 2 years he has studied many valuable courses. But 3 of them top the list of his favorites.

1. Statistics for Management: Taught by Prof. Rahul Mukerjee, this course is a mandatory Term-I course. More than the subject itself it’s the professor that makes it an amazing experience. He is the recipient of many national awards and has taught all over the world at reputed universities like Harvard.

2. Options, Futures and Derivatives: IIM Calcutta is without a doubt the finance campus of India. The finance faculty is the best you can get and this course does justice to finance completely. It’s quite a tough subject based on derivatives and technical finance. But for a true finance lover, it’s the best. It is taught by Prof. Binay Bhushan Chakrabarti (BBC) who was the Gold Medalist of the Batch of 1980 from IIM Calcutta.

3. Management of Self: Another eye-catching course at IIM Calcutta is Management of Self taught by Prof. Leena Chatterjee. She is a motherly figure in college. This is the only course here that teaches you about nothing but your own self. It’s a sort of personality grooming course that requires you to take a few personality tests and write an autobiography. This course helps you get more familiar with yourself and overcome internal struggles. It’s a Term-V elective course.

Although all courses offered at IIM Calcutta have their own benefits, these 3 are among the best maybe because of the respective professors.

If you are working in a company with great turnover and managing a leadership role, this programme is of little benefit to you. But if you want to open your own start-up and are willing to learn the know-how of business management and leadership skills this course welcomes you. Some major benefits of the course are:

• Many companies sponsor for you and are willing to take you back after the course

• This programme should be undertaken with long term benefits in mind. You should be confident that broadening your horizons will definitely pay you back one day later or sooner.

• For people who are always willing to learn more and more it’s the perfect course. It’s a tightly packed one year programme 

But every coin has two sides. As much as this course is beneficial in the long run it has its own drawbacks. Some drawbacks you should definitely know are:

• People who have lost their touch in academics will not be able to cope with the tight scheduled course 

• The placement opportunities are rare around 10-20% of the entire batch 

• People who are low on budget tend to take educational loans which are not worth this course.

So this course has its benefits but they are long term and one needs patience to uncover them.

The following review is based on personal experience with my sister who got enrolled in the current batch.

The following points will surely change your mind regarding the executive diploma in digital marketing at IIM Calcutta:

• Quality of the batch is extremely poor. It is more like a money making program than a knowledge imparting one.

• The fee for this program is exceptionally high. The course is priced at 3,28,000 for just 6 months. Whereas digital marketing institutes offer better courses at fees as low as INR 5000.

• The quality of the curriculum is below average. Rather than focusing on the main topic they are stuck to age old basic concepts of traditional marketing.

• No placement assistance is there for this programme.

• Lastly, this certification adds no value to your CV.

Don’t go for this program. The time and money are not worth investing in. Rather go for digital marketing institutes where industry experts will teach you better skills at low fees and less duration.

The EPBA or Executive Program on Business Analytics is a one year part time course with a fees of around INR 5.10 Lakh. The benefits you will derive from this course are

• You will get an excellent exposure to data science

• You will become well versed in all aspects of business, marketing, finance, supply chain, operations

• it opens various doors of the many new opportunities for your business company

Keep in mind that this is not a specialisation course. Rather it exposes you to a broad spectrum of data sciences and will teach you how the analytics should be used to power your business decisions. This course adds a great value to managers and business leaders.

But if you are looking for a beginners course in tool expertise in Data Science, then this course is not for you.