Whopping salaries for bcom/bA students :Eco Times

Sushant Lohani (CHARTERED ACCOUNTANT) (1051 Points)

22 January 2011  

MUMBAI: If you thought getting an MBA was the only sure-shot way of raking in the moolah, think again. Undergraduates in top colleges are being snapped up by multinationals at salaries that would do MBAs proud.

Deutsche Bank recently offered a BA (Honours) economics student from Lady Shri Ram College a posting in London at an annual package of Rs 32 lakh. It has also shortlisted a BCom student from Shri Ram College of Commerce for a job with a similar package (both colleges requested TOI not to name the students). For jobs in India, the Parthenon Group has offered annual packages of Rs 25 lakh while Meltwater has handed out offer letters with annual compensation of Rs 18 lakh.

At Jai Hind College, Mumbai, the highest offer that a student received during campus placements last year was Rs 10 lakh. "Seventy students from our college have been shortlisted by Google this year,'' says Jai Hind principal Kirti Narain .

At St Xavier's College, Mumbai, the highest offers range from Rs 7.5 lakh to Rs 9 lakh, and have been made to eight to ten students by Bain and McKinsey.

Citibank has shortlisted three students and will pay them Rs 10 lakh if they clear the final interview in Delhi. Most are students of economics while some are pursuing bachelors' in management studies.

"Our placements this year are better than earlier. The highest annual compensation was Rs 7 lakh last year. We now have at least 10 students who have got offers in the range of Rs 7-9 lakh," said Father Frazer Mascarenhas , St Xavier's College principal.

At the Jain University in Bangalore, the highest amount offered was Rs 8.3 lakh by Futures First, a UK-based company.

The next highest amount was 4.5 lakh by Deloitte and Societe Generale . On average, the salary varies from 2.4 to 2.6 lakh for undergraduate students. The placements will go on till March. Thirty companies have visited so far and around 400 students have been placed.

A large number of students at Narsee Monjee College had job offers in the range of Rs 8 lakh per annum, said college principal Sunil Mantri. After all, close to 80% of the students complete their CA along with their graduation. "After a slight dip last year, this year looks up. We have had companies like Infosys, the Tata Group as well as several banks visiting our campus,'' said Mantri.

Today, campus placements in the range of Rs 4 to 5 lakh are passe. "A student with a BSc in computer science got a placement of Rs 5.5 lakh for a technical writing job. An MA in literature from our institution also got an offer of Rs 5.5 lakh,'' said an official at Christ College , Bangalore.

Nirmala Prasad, principal, MOP Vaishnav College for Women, Chennai, said, "The placement scenario has been very encouraging this year. Companies like Standard Chartered , Scope International and Deloitte, the international audit firm, came for recruitment this year. Ford hired students for marketing and financial jobs.

Google took in students from Visual Communication because they have multimedia experience and also for content writing.

World Bank and Goldman Sachs hired students for back office work. Since it was difficult to find chartered accountants for financial jobs, she added that companies preferred to hire BCom graduates and train them."

source:economic times