The recently released list of top business schools in India has highlighted the level of quality and excellence that is prevalent in India’s top institutions. What is it though, that makes these business schools stand out from the rest? How is that they consistently produce top level managerial talent, that attracts multi national corporations as recruiters?

We decided to take a look at the top five government business schools in India, as determined by the Centre of Forecasting and Research. In an indication of the quality of these schools, Eduniversal, part of French consulting firm SMBG, awarded IIM-B the highest recognition under their evaluation, an astounding '5 Palmes', an honour which is only accorded to "universal business schools with major international influence".

This effectively puts IIM-Bangalore into the elite bracket of the 100 best schools on the planet.

The colleges were voted for by the Deans of the 1,000 best business schools from 153 countries, with IIM-Bangalore getting a recommendation rate of 395 per thousand, closely followed by Ahmadabad with 345.

Thus, with these kind of results, we decided to use CFORE to get an impartial insight, based on total statistics derived from figures such as Placement, Intellectual Capital, Industry Interface, Infrastructure, International Linkages, Recruiters Perception

Thus,the top five schools in the list are:

1. IIM-Ahmadabad: Established in 1961, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmadabad is regarded as one of the country's premier management institutes. It is widely considered to be the hardest postgraduate program to get selected into. It has forged a reputation of being one of the finest teaching institutions in India. It has an unrivalled placement system, with a number of excellent placements for graduates across fields as diverse as investment banking, marketing, information technology and private equity. Some examples of leading recruiters are: Investment banks such as HSBC, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Royal Bank of Scotland. Marketing giants like P&G and Hindustan Lever are also regular recruiters. IIM-A has a structured placement system, which occurs in three stages - summer recruitment, lateral placements and final recruitment.

2. IIM-Bangalore: Established in 1973, IIM-Bangalore is one of India's finest business schools, which consistently competes with IIM-A for the title of best business school in India. It too has an extensive range of placements, with companies like Mckinsey, BCG, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley all snapping up graduates from the placements.

3. IIM-Kolkata: The oldest amongst the IIM schools, IIM-K was founded in 1961 in collaboration with the MIT Sloan School of Management amongst others. It offers a number of intensive postgraduate programs, ranging from six month courses to two year full time courses.

4.IIM-Lucknow: IIM-L was established in 1984 as a national level school of management science. It was the fourth school to be established in India after the institutes in Kolkata, Bangalore and Ahmadabad. It seats about 390 students. It has created a niche for itself in the areas of marketing, consulting and finance. The teaching method of the school focuses on the case based methodology, which allows students to relate theories to real life situations.

5. MDI-Gurgaon: Established in 1973, the Management Development Institute is the only non IIM business school in the top five of the CFORE rankings. It is accredited by the U.K. based Association of MBAs and has a number of student exchange tie ups with international schools, including Kenan-Flagler Business School (North Carolina, USA), RSM Erasmus University (Rotterdam, Netherlands), ESCP-EAP (Paris, France) and Lahore University (Lahore, Pakistan).

It has a number of Post Graduate programs covering courses in Management to Human Resource Management.