I recently had an email from an Indian participant on the board asking "I would request you to kindly suggest me 2-3 b schools in Europe which have on-campus recruitment facility for their graduates or whose degree will ascertain job sureity." My reply might be interesting to others:

I'm afraid that the MBA in Europe is very different from the MBA in India, where *most* students will get jobs from companies that come on campus to recruit students. It's not like that in Europe, where *most* students will need to use personal networks to find there way to jobs.

Go to http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-rankings-2011 and add the 'Placements' data. You'll see the top schools are almost all in the North America and Asia. The exceptions are IMD and IESE. If you add Cranfield, ESADE, Imperial College, INSEAD and ESADE (which are slightly better than average) then you'll see that, for the best *assurance* of placement, Europe is not the place to study.

Of course when you look at the 'Employment' data in the same survey you will see that many European schools do well, especially those with strong alumni networks.

The bottom line: students have to play a much more active role in finding work in Europe.

Yeah duncan its a huge issue to spend 2 million in indian rupees and coming back to india.

with a salary of 23000 euros(good by indian standards), i would struggle to pay back 20000 or 30000 euros to swiss or dutch bank.

can you elabaorate on the uk schools since langauge is not an issue here?

i am coming to uk around early november for work. it may not be a bad idea to visit some schools. i am looking for programs clsoe to 12- 16 months and singificant schoalrships.

LBS, manchester,cranfield,oxford,cambridge,imperial are on my radar for enquiry. i am certainly going for LBS and one more in january

I had a great discussion about this recently with an Indian graduate of the MBA programme at Vlerick. That's a great programme, but (according to the FT ranking above) only 2/3rd of graduates were working three months later. If he had come from India thinking that local business would be lining up to hire people who don't speak the local language then he would have been dissapointed. Instead he found himself a great job with an Indian company in Germany.

In the UK language is less of a barrier but the nuances in accent and idiom are really significant - just look at the ongoing discussion about Indian English, which can sound very old-fashioned abroad - and much more real are the immigration barriers, which mount as the recession mounts.

I think the FT ranking are vital tools for that reason: look for schools which have a good position for careers, employment and placement (and that that more seriously than average salary) and then also look for schools that succeed there with a high percentage of international students.

In your position, I would also look at a more extensive four term/semester programme like LBS, Manchester or Cranfield rather than a nine month programme. In a nine-month programme you'll have less time to learn and develop, and much less of an opportunity for intensive group work to help you adapt your soft skills to a more international environment.