A Game-Theoretic Modelling of Risk Preferences of the Students during the Placement Process for Summer Internship, IIM Ahmedabad

Abstract

The placement process for summer placements at IIM Ahmedabad renders a series of decisions to be judiciously taken by every student owing to the limited time availability and a highly competitive environment. In this paper, we have primarily analysed the period between the day students of first year management programme have their CVs frozen (cannot be altered later) and the day the last student of the batch gets an internship offer. The dilemmas faced by a student are dependent on their personal profile but also largely on the sequence of events unfolding during the period. Using the publicly available data of last two years’ summer placements, a survey administered to second year students, long form conversational interviews (LFCI) with concerned office bearers over the last one month, and the previously established econometric models for utility derived in various human activities as given in literature have been quantitatively and qualitatively analysed and combined together to generate a set of inequalities attempting to resolve the dilemmas that students face. The various decisions are considered as subgames in a decision tree, and have been solved using the inequalities developed. Significant insights about the proposed rational behaviour has been drawn and interpreted back in non-mathematical terms in the end. In an attempt to maximise the various utility functions, some of the variables have been taken as categorical predictors providing a discrete description of the placement process. Overall, the paper attempts to give a systematic method of analysing and recommend the decisions a rational student should optimally take during the three months period of excessive work load, and high stakes.