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Government set to do away with group discussions, personal interview for MBA admission

Scores in MAH-CET and not CMAT will be taken into account for entry.

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The Maharashtra government is contemplating to abolish group discussion (GD) and personal interview (PI) rounds for admission into B-schools in the state this year. In that case, admissions will be based on scores in MAH-CET or in any other national test.

Reason: too many seats and too few candidates.

By November end, a proposal in this regard had been submitted to the Higher and Technical Education Ministry by the directorate of technical education. The proposal also states that candidates who secured ‘zero’ in the test will not be admitted. “Though the ministry is yet to approve the proposal officially, ‘in-principle’, it has been agreed upon,” said a Mantralaya official.

Confirming the news, SK Mahajan, director of technical education, told dna, “The ministry’s approval is awaited but I don’t see any reason why it should be rejected.”

This year, most IIMs scrapped GD for admission to post-graduate programmes. They replaced it with another written test.

In 2013-14, Maharashtra admitted candidates on the basis of scores in  national-level test CMAT, without GD/PI, which was introduced abolishing the state-level admission test. The vacancy in B-schools has increased from 25% to 39% after the introduction of CMAT, prompting the state to restart its own Common Entrance Test (CET)from 2014-15.

GD and PI had been a major part for the admission till 2012-13. While written exam’s (CET) weightage was 200, 40 marks for GD/PI ((17 each for GD and PI), and four and two for work experience and academic records, respectively).

A professor of Sydenham Institute of Management condemned the proposal. “This will further deteriorate the quality of management education. Some minimum communication skills are must, if you want to get a degree,” said the professor.

A professor of Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies welcomed the move, “This would completely eliminate human intervention. Some aggressive candidates always ended up dominating the discussion, leaving no scope to test the analytical skills of others.” 

He added, “Admission in IITs is based on the written test only. Hence, I fail to understand the need for GD/ PI for B-schools. Moreover, no one has any statistics to show the difference in the scores of written test and GD/PI.”

But MBA aspirants seem to be a happy bunch. “With only written test, I am confident that I will get into a good B-school. My stress is now reduced by 75%,” said a 22-year-old woman aspirant.

MAH-CET exam in March, but students clueless
The MAH-CET’s online exam is slated for March 15-16 and students are inquiring with the directorate about the details of the exam. But the directorate has failed to answer as it waits for the approval from the ministry. Interestingly, the file had travelled to Nagpur during the winter session of the state assembly. “Minister Rajesh Tope didn’t get time to sign it,” said an official.

MBA/ MMS in Maharashtra (2013-14)
411 Number of institutes

45,297 Available seats

27,557 (20,500 through DTE, 7,057 at institute level) Admitted

17,740 (39%) Vacancy.

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