IIM Placement Salary: Which School Really Pays More?

Exam Updates

Only 1,300 accepted offers separate three IIM placement reports that get shared as a single screenshot every admission season. Someone crops out the average CTC line, drops the batch year, and posts it next to a school it was never measured against. By the time it reaches a WhatsApp group, a 2023-25 Indore number is sitting next to a 2025 Ahmedabad number as if both describe the same year.

None of the three schools published a bad number. The problem is how the numbers get lifted out of context and stacked against each other. This piece keeps every figure attached to its actual batch, names which are officially confirmed and which are estimates, and shows what the gap between average and median tells you.

Why Average and Median Are Not the Same Promise

An average CTC is one number, the total of every accepted offer divided by how many offers there were. A median CTC is a different number entirely: the exact midpoint offer, with half the batch earning more and half earning less. Read alone, either number can flatter a school. Read together, they tell you something neither one reveals by itself.

A school with a high average and a much lower median has a small number of exceptional offers pulling the whole figure upward, while most of the batch actually lands closer to that lower median. A school where average and median sit close together is telling you the opposite story: outcomes across the batch were consistently strong, not propped up by a handful of outlier packages.

That single comparison, average against median, is the core of the 3 Number Placement Read below, and the fastest way to read a placement report honestly instead of taking one impressive headline number at face value. It matters more the further out your own CAT attempt is, since an older report describes a market that will have moved by the time you graduate.

Knowing which tier of outcome is realistic for your own profile starts earlier than results day. A CAT percentile predictor check against these schools' typical call cutoffs is a far more useful anchor than any single average CTC headline.

The Batch Year Most Readers Skip Past

Notice that no two rows in that table describe the same year. IIM Ahmedabad's figures are for its batch 2025. IIM Lucknow's are batch 2024-25, across its PGP and PGP-ABM programmes together, 604 offers total. IIM Indore's are batch 2023-25. Comparing them as if they happened in the same placement season is the single most common way this data gets misread online.

This also means none of these numbers describe the CAT 2026 cycle. Students who sit CAT 2026 graduate around 2028-29, and no institute has published outcomes for a batch that has not yet finished its degree.

Treat every figure here as the most recently available officially reported number, referenced now, not a live 2026 result. If a source presents a placement figure as this year's result for a batch that has not graduated yet, that alone is a sign the number was not read carefully before it was shared. The safest habit is checking the batch label every single time, not just the first time you see a number that surprises you.

The Schools With No Clean Number to Report

IIM Bangalore does not publish an average, median or highest CTC figure in its own official placement communications. Its own press releases and reports show offer counts, recruiter counts and sector splits, and deliberately stop short of a compensation figure. Any specific salary number you see circulating for IIM Bangalore online is a third-party estimate, not an institute-confirmed one, and it should be treated that way.

IIM Calcutta sits in a middle position. A figure of roughly 36 lakh average CTC, 35 lakh median, with a 145 lakh highest domestic and 110.16 lakh highest international offer, has been reported by Careers360's placement coverage for a batch reported in April 2026. That number is not independently confirmed through IIM Calcutta's own release, which currently surfaces only a stale 2018 PDF. Cite it, if at all, as a media report, not an institute confirmed one.

IIM Kozhikode is the clearest case of a number not worth repeating at all. Sources found for it are aggregator only, and mutually inconsistent, appearing to describe different or conflated batch years depending on which site you read. Rather than pick one of those numbers and present it as fact, the honest position is that no consistent, officially confirmed figure currently exists for it.

When a number this widely shared cannot be traced back to an institute's own release, the more useful move is talking to someone who has actually sat through the process rather than trusting whichever aggregator ranks highest in a search. A free CAT 2026 mentorship call with IIM and FMS alumni gets you a grounded, first hand read on what a specific school's outcomes actually looked like, instead of another recycled screenshot.

Reading the Gap as a Signal, Not Just a Number

Look back at the three confirmed rows. IIM Ahmedabad's gap between average and median is the smallest of the three, roughly 54,000 rupees on an average near 30 lakh, under two percent. That is a batch where the typical outcome and the headline outcome are nearly the same number, which is a meaningfully different story than a school whose average is inflated by a small cluster of exceptional offers.

IIM Indore's gap is proportionally the largest of the three verified schools, about 2.57 lakh on an average near 29.57 lakh, close to nine percent. That does not make Indore's outcomes weak. Its median of 27 lakh is still a strong result.

It does mean the batch's top offers pulled the average up by more than at Lucknow or Ahmedabad, exactly the kind of context a bare headline number never shows you. If IIM Calcutta's reported figures hold up under a fuller, institute confirmed release, its roughly 1 lakh gap on a 36 lakh average would sit closer to Ahmedabad's tight distribution than to Indore's wider one, though that comparison stays hedged until IIM Calcutta publishes its own numbers.

None of these three gaps is large in absolute terms, which is itself worth noticing. A genuinely top heavy placement report, the kind driven by one or two outlier international offers, produces a gap far wider than anything in this table. These three schools are closer to consistent than dramatic, which is a quieter story than any single headline average suggests.

What This Means for Choosing Your Own Target

None of this is a reason to chase the single highest average CTC on a list. It is a reason to run the 3 Number Placement Read, average, median, and the gap between them, on every report you look at before you let it shape a decision about where to apply.

Where you actually land in a few years depends far more on your own CAT percentile, profile and preparation than on which screenshot circulated in your peer group this admission season. A realistic sense of which tier of these outcomes your own target percentile puts you in range for is worth more than memorising one impressive average.

That starts with a plan built around the tier you are actually aiming for, not the tier that shows up most often in group chats. A personalised CAT study plan that treats your target percentile as the real objective, rather than a vague sense of wanting to do well, is what turns a placement number you admire into a target worth actually preparing for.

It also means resisting the urge to rank schools purely by whichever average CTC travels fastest through your peer group. A school with a tighter gap between average and median, even at a slightly lower average, is telling you something about consistency that a bigger, more top heavy number cannot. Weigh that alongside fit, location and the kind of recruiters a school actually attracts, not just the one figure everyone quotes first.