Now that the Common Admission Test (CAT) results are out, all eyes are on the next round — GD-PI. PaGaLGuY spoke to some of the top b-schools other than the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) to find out what is their plan of action for the next round and whether Common Management Admission Test (CMAT) scores would come in their radar.
S P Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR), Mumbai ranked 8th in our b-school rankings for 2011, will be holding the GD-PI round in the first week of February as they would also wait for accept Xavier Aptitude Test (XAT) scores, whose results will be out in the last week of January. Since the admission process had been announced long ago, we will not be accepting CMAT scores this year, the institute stated in a e-mail reply to PaGaLGuY. The b-school’s application process ended on November 30, 2011.
Eleventh ranked Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon, is planning to conduct its GD-PI rounds between the third week of March and the second week of April; results will be declared in the first week of May. The institute has not yet decided as to whether it would be accepting CMAT scores this year. It had closed the application registration dates on October 20, 2011 , two days before the commencement of CAT.
The National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), ranked 13th, will conduct GD-PI in the second and third week of March. The final results will be declared in the first week of April. NITIE too, will not consider CMAT scores this year and go ahead with CAT scores only, as it has always done in the past.
Shailesh J Mehta School of Management (SJMSoM), IIT Mumbai, ranked 17th, began its online application process on January 12. While the last date for submission of the online forms has been scheduled for January 30, the institute will accept hard copies of the forms till January 31. The final GD-PI list will be declared on February 10 with the process scheduled between 2 to 5 March. The results for all IITs are scheduled to release on the same date — April 25. However, each IIT will declare the results on its individual portals. SJMSoM too will not be accepting CMAT scores for the year 2012. Ankur Rustagi, student coordinator for admissions 2012-13, explained that the decision to accept CMAT will most probably be common for all IITs and will be taken later this year. Since this is the first time the IIT admission process is based on CAT scores, SJMSoM has decided to consider only those candidates who have an engineering, MSc or a National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) degree.
Moving away from the general trend, 18th ranked Institute of Management Technology (IMT) has decided to accept CMAT scores for their Nagpur and Hydrabad campuses for 2012. However, admission to the Ghaziabad campus will still be taken on the basis of CAT scores. Although the original admission deadline for the Institute was scheduled in November, since the decision to accept CMAT scores was taken recently, IMT has opened its application process for one week from January 13 to January 20, 2012. Dr AM Sherry, admission in-charge, IMT explained that since CAT results are already out, GD-PI for the Ghaziabad campus is scheduled for February 1. We will wait for the CMAT results and schedule another GD-PI session for Nagpur and Hydrabad campuses after the results are declared, Dr Sherry said.
Department of Management Studies (DMS), Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi will be conducting the GD-PI process from March 23-26, while the final results will be announced a month later on April 25. “The application registration date of the institute started on January 13 and will continue till the 27th,” said Sanjeev Chandran H, student co-ordinator, DMS-IIT Delhi.
TA Pai Management Institute, ranked 25th , will be considering XAT, Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) and Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) scores from this academic year onwards besides CAT, as a result of which it has postponed the application registration dates from January 15 to February 15 (as XAT results will be announced by the end of this month), according to Prof Ramana A V, chairman-admissions, TAPMI Manipal. The GD-PI round will commence after February 25 and will be completed by the end of March, he added. “The institute will not be accepting CMAT scores this year as the b-school’s admission process had begun in August last year, and will be completed by April 15”, Prof Ramana said.
Ranked 22nd, Mudra Institute of Communication (MICA) in Ahmedabad has its GD-PI sessions scheduled in the first week of April. The application submission deadline for the institute is January 30. MICA that also holds its own admission test, the Mudra Institute of Communication Admission Test (MICAT), scheduled to take place either in the last week of February or the first week of March this year, will not accept CMAT scores this year.
Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSoM), IIT, Kharagpur, ranked 25th, started accepting applications from December 27, 2011. The final date for accepting applications by the institute is January 27. Their GD-PI sessions are scheduled in four places. In Mumbai, they will take place from March 9 to 12, in Kolkata from 20 to 22 March, in Delhi from 27 to 30 March and in Bangalore from April 3 to 6. The institute will not be accepting CMAT scores this year.
IIT Kanpur’s Industrial and Management Engineering (IME), ranked 27th, is likely to schedule the interview round in the last week of March. ” Tentatively, we will be conducting the interviews in the last week of March, may be 23rd-24th, results of which will be declared in a month’s time”, said Prof B V Phani. “We will only be conducting GDs this time, in which personal interaction will also be incorporated. A formal personal interview has been excluded from the format”, he added. The institute has extended the last date for application submission from January 27 to February 3 due to some problem in its website.