Defining the canvas for your b-school

Over the past 5-7 years, Indian b-schools have been in the roller-coaster ride dealing with changing profiles of applicants, whimsical regulatory bodies, micro-economic factors, dynamic growth in standard of higher education along with the rising expectations from people taking up higher-ed for getting access to excellent careers through these b-schools.

A lot has happened and all of these need to be classified for these b-schools to understand their current situation (vis-a-vis a certain standard of reference), and figure out the steps to be taken in the coming years.

Similar to other industries, b-schools too are fragmented into various sections/segments. There isn't a single point of differentiation that can be considered while grouping these b-schools. Doing such a thing will lead to incorrect modelling of the entire story and incorrect forecasting.

I have chosen to use the overall profiles of b-schools and map them on a graph with time on X-axis, and density of applications in the Y-axis. I have then chosen to use multiple factors that are common amongst most of these b-schools to provide them a particular band. These bands then can be named as B-school 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 respectively. The area of the band will also give an idea of the number of b-schools that are present in that particular band (as on this year). The growth of a b-school across the last decade had clearly been the path that leads it through 2.0, 3.0 and puts it currently into a 4.0 band.
The following is the visual representation of the same: