PGSEM Elective Courses Allocation Process and Rules

Post-Graduate Program in Software Enterprise Management (PGSEM)
Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B)

Phase 1:

Input from students:
Input from office:
Output:
Process:
The number of elective courses a student can taken is mainly determined by the PGSEM schedule. This puts a hard limit of 4 courses per quarter (counting both elective and project courses). The following rules determine the maximum number of courses:
 Provided the above criteria are met, a student does not need a specific permission from the PGSEM Chairperson to do 4 courses per quarter.

A student can submit a maximum of three preferences in this phase.

Phase 1 gathers who-wants-what-elective-courses information and in turn the demand for each elective course. This information is used to schedule classes so as to minimize the likelihood of a student not getting an elective course due to schedule constraints. Note that the gathered information is considered along with the following hard constraints to arrive at the schedule:

Phase 2 (a) and 2 (b):

Input from students:
Input from office:
Output:
Process
In Phase 2, just as in phase 1, a student submits the number of elective courses he plans to take and  a prioritized list of elective course preferences. He also marks whether he plans to do a project in the quarter.

From Q2 2006-07, Phase 2 is done in two sub-phases 2(a) and 2(b). 2(a) is meant for the senior batches (for Q2 2006-07, these include all batches who joined in years 2004 or earlier.) Outcome of 2(a) is announced so that the junior batch (for Q2 2006-07 this is the batch which joined in 2005) can make better decisions.

A student gets an elective course he asked for unless it gets rejected for any of the following reasons:
Ranking is done based on the following rules which are explained in detail below:
  1. older_and_lazy_rule: batch (joining year) and #credits earned so far (inclusive of Q4 2005)
  2. course_priority_rule: the priority put for the elective course
  3. cgpa_rule: CGPA
These rules are best explained by means of an example. Using the notation:

(studentid, batch, #credits, coursepriority, CGPA)

let's assume the choices for a particular elective course are:

(S01, 2002, 90, 1, 3.12)
(S02, 2002, 96, 2, 3.22)
(S03, 2003, 90, 2, 3.13)
(S04, 2003, 96, 1, 3.23)
(S05, 2004, 72, 1, 3.14)
(S06, 2004, 72, 2, 3.24)
(S07, 2004, 72, 3, 3.34)
(S08, 2005, 36, 3, 3.15)
(S09, 2005, 36, 2, 3.25)
(S10, 2005, 36, 1, 3.25)

older_and_lazy_rule: An earlier batch student who hasn't completed <93 credits gets ranked higher. This would result in  sorting the  students above into the following buckets:

Bucket 1:
(S01, 2002, 90, 1, 3.12)

Bucket 2:
(S03, 2003, 90, 2, 3.13)

Bucket 3:
(S05, 2004, 72, 1, 3.14)
(S06, 2004, 72, 2, 3.24)
(S07, 2004, 72, 3, 3.34)

Bucket 4:
(S02, 2002, 96, 2, 3.22)
(S04, 2003, 96, 1, 3.23)
(S08, 2005, 36, 3, 3.15)
(S09, 2005, 36, 2, 3.25)
(S10, 2005, 36, 1, 3.25)

course_priority_rule: Students who have put a higher priority for an  elective course gets ranked higher. This would result in the following buckets:

Bucket 1.1:
(S01, 2002, 90, 1, 3.12)

Bucket 2.1:
(S03, 2003, 90, 2, 3.13)

Bucket 3.1:
(S05, 2004, 72, 1, 3.14)

Bucket 3.2:
(S06, 2004, 72, 2, 3.24)

Bucket 3.3:
(S07, 2004, 72, 3, 3.34)

Bucket 4.1:
(S04, 2003, 96, 1, 3.23)
(S10, 2005, 36, 1, 3.25)

Bucket 4.2:
(S02, 2002, 96, 2, 3.22)
(S09, 2005, 36, 2, 3.25)

Bucket 4.3:
(S08, 2005, 36, 3, 3.15)

cgpa_rule: Students who have a higher CGPA gets ranked higher. This results in the following sorting:

(S01, 2002, 90, 1, 3.12)
(S03, 2003, 90, 2, 3.13)
(S05, 2004, 72, 1, 3.14)
(S06, 2004, 72, 2, 3.24)
(S07, 2004, 72, 3, 3.34)
(S10, 2005, 36, 1, 3.25)
(S04, 2003, 96, 1, 3.23)
(S09, 2005, 36, 2, 3.25)
(S02, 2002, 96, 2, 3.22)
(S08, 2005, 36, 3, 3.15)

A rank list per elective course is made. Allocations are done iteratively such that students who rank higher according to the older_and_lazy rule get allocated first across all elective courses. For example, 2002 students with <93 credits get allocated first., followed by 2003 students with <93 credits, followed by 2004 students (all with <93 credits), followed by 2005 students (all with <93 credits). Students with >=93 credits (from years 2003, 2002, .etc.) are considered only after the current batch (viz., 2005 students). Students who have not submitted their Phase 1 preferences are considered last.

Within an older_and_lazy bucket, allocations are done iteratively such that students who rank higher according to the course_priority_rule get allocated first across all elective courses. That is, priority 2 preferences are considered only after all possible priority 1 preferences have been allocated.

In the example above, if the elective course has 10 seats all students will get the course. If it has only 5 seats, S01, S03, S05, S06 and S07 will get the course. Others will get rejected.

Note that elective courses have two kinds of caps. A cap set by the faculty or a cap arising out of class seating capacity constraints. So do not assume  that if an elective course doesn't mention an instructor specified capacity, it can seat any number of students. PGSEM class rooms in IIMB (such as P11, P12, CPP1, CPP2) have varying capacities. The largest class room can seat only 68. The smallest perhaps about 55.

Also note that elective courses would have site specific capacities. That is, different caps for Bangalore and Chennai.

Phase 3:
Input from students:
Input from office:
Output:
Process
A student can do either of the following (only one such transaction request permitted and only one transaction allowed):
 A student can submit swap / add requests for an elective course which is capped in Phase 2.
His request will succeed provided students drop from that elective course and enough free seats become available.

If any elective course would cap because of adds, preferences given to those with higher CGPA.

A drop request would succeed only if the number of strudents enrolled in a course does not drop below the minimum capacity of the course. This is15 for Bangalore and 5 for Chennai.

How to increase the likelihood of getting what you want:

Copyright (c) 2006. Sankaranarayanan K V. All rights reserved.
Last updated $Id: electives-allocation.html,v 1.10 2006/08/14 06:33:16 a14562 Exp $