The Gatekeeper At The Indian School of Business

P1 is essentially the designation given to what the school considers “totally diverse people.” Because so many of ISB’s applicants are male engineers, a priority is placed on trying to find candidates who are outside that mainstream so that the class can be more diverse, given the limitations of the school’s draw outside India. An example of a P1 candidate, says Menon, was the national captain of the Indian hockey team, who was accepted and graduated in 2009.

Not surprisingly, the people in the P3 pile are virtual shoe-ins and a significant percentage of them also apply to the very best U.S. schools. The P1 candidates have the next best chance to get into ISB because of its formidable challenge to craft a diverse class from largely only Indian applicants, the majority of whom have engineering backgrounds.

AN EIGHT-PERSON ADMISSIONS COMMITTEE INCLUDES TWO STUDENTS

All the remaining applications go into the P2 pile, the largest category. “These applications get read by two admissions readers,” he says.

All told, slightly more than 2,000 applications a year fall into P2, with another 1,000 immediately marked the most desirable P3. Menon estimates that there are about 500 applicants who are designated P1, while there are about 300 who are P4. Readers give a recommendation based on a scoring formula for the three buckets.

All short-listed candidates are interviewed–roughly one in every two and one-half applicants. The interviews last about half an hour “happens in ‘discussion’ mode around competence of the candidate,” says Menon. “The overall weight for interviews would be close to the GMAT.”

‘THE TYPICAL RECRUITER WANTS PEOPLE WHO ARE WELL-GROUNDED AND CAN COMMUNICATE’

When all the data is done—including the interviews which are conducted by admissions staff and senior alumni—the recommendations come into an eight-person admissions committee. The panel is composed of two faculty members, two students, two alumni, and two senior admissions staffers. “The committee meets before the process and then we have two rounds for selection,” explains Menon. “The entire stats are presented to the committee in descending order of their final scores.”

The committee itself reads between 30 to 40 files in one meeting and meets once for each of the two rounds plus additional sessions for international applicants as they come in.

The school is trying hard to get more well-rounded applicants and students into its program. “For the typical recruiter, it’s not a single test score that makes the difference,” says Menon. “They want people who can communicate effectively and who are well grounded.”

When ISB loses admitted applicants, it’s usually to the top U.S. business schools, including Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, and Kellogg. But Menon says the school has sometimes also lost to CEIBS in China, HKUST in Hong Kong, and the National University of Singapore’s business school.

Menon says the school is now being proactive in recruiting the country’s best students. ISB has started a program similar to Harvard Business School’s 2+2 program to encourage undergraduate students at India’s top universities to apply for deferred admission to the school. If accepted, they would then work two years and then come to Indian Business School for a graduate degree. “We really go out and meet a lot of students,” he says. “We have extensive sessions and slowly the message that our evaluation is not based on a single test is spreading.”

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