Is IMT Ghaziabad worth attending despite toxic placement committee behavior?

A video showing IMT Ghaziabad's placement committee verbally abusing students — juniors aggressively yelling at seniors for minor infractions like being late or smiling — has raised a pointed and legitimate question: is IMT Ghaziabad still a worthwhile investment despite this, given its standing as a top-32 B-school in India?

The honest answer is: it depends on what you're optimizing for. But let's work through the full picture first.

On whether this behavior is isolated to IMT

It isn't. From what we've tracked across student conversations over the years, placement committee toxicity is a structural problem in Indian B-school culture, not an IMT-specific one. We've heard this perspective from experienced professionals across programs: "Placement Committees have always been like this. It's always like the Stanford Prison Experiment. Students in Placecomm always forget who they are and get drunk on perceived power." From a student at a newer IIM: "This is common shit across all B-schools. I legit almost quit my MBA because of this torturous behaviour from placecomm."

That said, this isn't universal either. Alumni perspectives from IIM ABC suggest their placement committee is "damn helpful" and that "people know here that B-school is just about networking and they'll be meeting again — hence no sense in having bad blood." From IIT alumni contexts, we've also seen the observation that while students coordinate placements at IITs, no one engages in this kind of behaviour. The difference, in our reading, comes down to institutional culture and the degree to which faculty oversight exists.

On IMT Ghaziabad specifically

From the experience of a 2017 IMT Ghaziabad admit who ultimately left for another South Indian B-school: "Knew it was gonna be tough — not to forget the 600+ batch size. These private B-schools are not worth your safety and self-respect as they offer the same tier of profiles and packages." That's a perspective worth sitting with, particularly if you have comparable alternatives on the table.

The 600+ batch size is a real factor here, independent of placement committee culture. Larger batches intensify competition for placement slots, which in turn amplifies the power dynamic that placement committees operate within. This is the structural condition that enables the behaviour in the first place.

The trade-off as it actually stands

Placement committees in Indian B-schools hold genuine, consequential power — they determine your access to recruiters, your slot timing, and in some cases your eligibility for certain roles. That's not informal leverage; it's institutionalised leverage. Student-led systems, without external checks, tend to produce exactly the dynamics you're seeing.

The question for any individual aspirant considering IMT Ghaziabad is whether the placement outcomes — the package levels, the recruiter access, the brand recognition in your target sector — justify absorbing that environment for two years. For some profiles and goals, the answer may still be yes. For others, particularly those with admits from institutions with stronger faculty oversight of placement processes, the calculus may look different.

In our experience, the aspirants who make this decision well are the ones who speak directly to current students and recent alumni — not just about packages, but specifically about day-to-day placement committee interactions. That ground-level intelligence matters more here than rankings alone.

The broader systemic fix, which several voices agree on, is independent or faculty-led placement cells rather than student-run committees with unchecked authority. Until that changes institutionally, this remains a calculated trade-off between brand value, placement access, and personal dignity during the MBA journey — and that trade-off is one only you can weigh.