Looking back at the way many premier Indian b-schools have handled their admission processes this year, the MBA admission season of 2010-11 will not exactly be remembered as a season that people were fond of.

From changing their admission criteria midway after selling application forms on a certain premise to using questionable methods of factoring school and college academic scores, the season has seen b-schools indulge in contentious practices that seem to be designed more to reduce their own workload than for selecting the right set of students for their batches. In the end, these practices have effectively laid to waste entire entrance test preparations of thousands, not to mention money spent on application forms.

In a series of articles, we’ll highlight the grievances that MBA aspirants have with specific b-schools.

Master of Financial Control (MFC) and Master of Business Economics (MBE), Delhi University

After selling application forms on the premise that group discussion and interview shortlists for the MFC and MBE would be made on the basis of CAT scores and graduation marks, the Department overseeing the admissions changed its criteria midway and instead granted interview calls on the basis of the class X and XII marks along with the CAT 2010 score.

In newspaper advertisements issued in September 2010, the Department of Financial Studies (DFS) and Department of Business Economics (DBE) of Delhi University — which offer the MFC and MBE courses — invited admission applications specifying that the ‘CAT results will be used for shortlisting candidates for the above programmes’.

In short, the following is what they claimed in their newspaper advertisements,

And the following is what they spelled out in their academic prospectus,

The prospectus said, ‘Candidates will be shortlisted on the basis of CAT percentiles and percentage marks scored at the graduation level.’ Class X and class XII marks could be factored in, but only after the group discussion and interview stage.

And on January 28, 2011 when they released the group discussion and interview shortlist, following is the criteria they actually used,

Several applicants scoring above the 98 or 99 percentile in the CAT were in for a shock after finding out that they had not been shortlisted either for MFC or MBE.

“They initially mentioned that they would shortlist using the CAT score and graduation marks but they have used class X and XII marks (along with the CAT score) instead. This translates to a case of misleading advertisements. Had we known that they will use class X and XII marks, those scoring badly in these exams would never have wasted their money on buying the MFC and MBE forms,” said Rahul Sood, a Chandigarh-based CAT aspirant who scored a 98.92 percentile. Applicants were required to spend Rs 1,700 to apply to both MFC and MBE and Rs 1,100 for one course.

Several high-scoring CAT applicants are feeling cheated by the ad-hoc nature of the MBE and MFC admissions process this year and are considering legal action against the department to seek a new shortlist or a refund of their application costs.

PaGaLGuY asked the MFC-MBE Admissions Coordinator Prof CP Gupta why the final admission criteria had not been disclosed at the time of selling the application forms and he said,

Each department/university/business school has a freedom to decide about the admission criterion that, in their wisdom, is best for them. It was felt by our admission committee that performance of a candidate in few hours during CAT Examination is highly contingent upon a number of uncontrollable factors which may not allow a candidate to exhibit his/her true caliber and intelligence; what is more important is a candidate should perform academically on a consistent basis during his/her educational career. Hence, one can not take CAT the only one criterion for selection instead it is based on an Index based on a number of parameters taking into account consistent meritorious performance of a candidate.

Nowhere in our information brochure we had promised that the candidates will be shortlisted only on the basis of CAT percentile. Many times, one fixes the criteria on the basis of kind of candidates applied for the admission. For instance, we can never publish sectional-cutoff before we get the results, as we have to build up the scenarios and select the one which is most suitable for our requirement; also, none can announce any cut-off before hand. One should always appreciate the fact whatever criteria one fixes, it may suit some and it may not suit others; as per our criteria there are candidates who have been selected, how one can say they are inferior than others? But they are not raising the issue why the criteria were not published in information brochure before. One should not forget the psychology of those who are not selected as per some criteria.

I believe that there is always an inclusive debate what are the best criteria for selection? Selecting appropriate criteria is a matter of choice and in a democratic set-up, every entity has a right to decide that.

We are transparent in our admission process; our selection criteria are now public and whosoever is asking for detail about his/her overall index we are providing the same.

In our view, Prof Gupta has tried to deflect the focus of the matter towards the debate about an institute’s right to decide an admission criteria, which was never really the centre of controversy. If an institute deems great academics as a demonstrator of admission suitability, it has the right to use it as a factor. However, the rules of the game ought to be declared before it starts and not changed midway.

Secondly, saying that “Nowhere in our information brochure we had promised that the candidates will be shortlisted only on the basis of CAT percentile” is inaccurate as the information brochure went to the extent of saying that both the CAT score and graduation marks will be used, and the class X and XII marks will be used during the final admission stage.

Thirdly, the constraint about having to decide cutoffs only after looking at the sample is legitimate. But the the decision about using school marks over graduation scores is a larger policy decision that MFC-MBE could have taken at the start of the process. This larger decision cannot be mixed with the cutoff constraint.

Fourth, transparency is only one of the many dimensions of a good admission experience that an institute should optimize. But transparency at the end of an arbitrary process means little. It is tantamount to saying, “We might have been arbitrary, but at least we are being transparent about how arbitrary we are at the fag end of our arbitrariness.”

Until last year, these two programs used to together attract approximately 10,000 applications for an entrance test they used to hold for themselves. This year, their combined admissions process decided to switch over to the Common Admission Test (CAT) scores. Application numbers got hit over last year, as ostensibly only those applied to MFC and MBE who expected a good CAT score.