Riding on GMAT scores as its admission criterion, the premier management institute is all set to sail into the league of the top 20 business schools in the world
AHMEDABAD: Wharton, Harvard and other global leaders in management education may soon be facing competition from one of their counterparts down east. Riding on GMAT scores as its admission criterion, Ahmedabad's Indian Institute of Management is all set to sail into the league of the top 20 business schools in the world.
The newly introduced Post Graduate Diploma for Executives (PGPX) will use GMAT scores instead of CAT for admissions, opening IIM-A doors for students from all over the globe.
Dubbed as IIM-A's best foot forward, the course which has a requirement of over 27 years of age and work experience, has already drawn over 40 applications from abroad. This is in addition to an overwhelming response with 700 odd applications from India for the course scheduled from April 2006, despite a tight lead time.
The idea is to let IIM-A emerge as a global player and draw students from the same pool that aspires for the world's stop. "We want to train business leaders for global environment. Since we have to attract students from all over the world, we can't have a testing instrument meant for the India. We wanted to benchmark the admissions with the world's best business schools," says IIM-A director Prof Bakul Dholakia.
Explaining the idea, he adds, "Since GMAT scores are used by everyone for admissions, Indian students eyeing these schools can add IIM-A to their list of desired B-schools, alongwith Harvard and Wharton. Like them we will consider GMAT score and applicant profile, but our admission process will also have an interview element which has proven to be a great tool."
Prof Dholakia is emphatic about the exclusivity of IIM-A course design as a completely new product. "There is a huge potential for proper executive education, not just training. The Western model of management education requires at least four to five years of experience, taking the age group of students to 27-28 years. After lot of debate we concluded not to change the eligibility criteria."
IIM is confident that executive students will be quick to learn in a year's time.
Besides, the institute thinks will also carve a niche into a new market, which was never tapped despite the potential-- education for the executives --- as only seven to eight per cent of the 1.5 lakh students who take CAT, manage to get admission in a B-school.
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