The admissions gate to most B-schools have shut down, almost. As an individual who has tried to cross the hurdle of that one year long stress consisting of exam preps, analysis of exam notifications and institutes and attending
institutes, here are some suggestions that may help in improving the whole scheme of MBA admissions.
-We don't need hazaar entrance exams for MBA/MMS/MIB/PGDPM/PGPM and what not. Its time to club together the exams that follow a similar pattern. E.g.: Most of the university exams have a similar pattern checking skills in English and Math and General Affairs awareness. Why do we need MAT/CAT/ATMA/XAT? CAT has a bit
different pattern and GMAT costing around ten thousand grants is out of the bounds. But, what about the rest?
-Admission cells of various autonomous instis/ examination bodies should ensure that their exam notification get published in leading national dailies. Raised eyebrows? For information, most Southies didn't get information on the
Maharashtra CET at the appropriate time. If the process of giving ads in national dailies is expensive, at least posters/ information leaflets regarding the exams and institute can be send to the head offices of various coaching classes. Rare to find a student who attempts these exams without the help of a coaching class. Networking will ensure that most students will get to know about the examinations at the right time.
-Ensure the correspondence between the student and institute/ exam bodies happens through registered post or speed post of our good ol' postal department only. There are courier companies that don't deliver documents to the students if they are staying in some remote villages. And they quote, "Recipient address invalid." The true reason is that it is operationally expensive for them to deliver it in remote places.
-Why do we need the fifty percent cutoff in graduation for appearing the entrance exams? How can courses as dynamic as management focus on such rigid rules? How about a guy who has done his three year full time diploma in hotel
management while doing graduation through correspondence and working part time? It is not fair to insist on a cut off for such hardworking people. These may be exceptions to the rule but they do exist.
-It is time to vet the B-School analysis done by some magazines. There are talks of these magazines diluting the editorial standards by changing the school ranking to source more advertisements.
-Forget the investment tips in business mags and dump those MLM schemes. Here's a chance to earn some cool money. Make a list of all management courses in India with the FEES INPUT clearly mentioned. Many institutes don?t publish it in their prospects. E.g.. SPJIMR, Mumbai. And as expected, no business mags will touch this section. Adding a detailed analysis of placement salary will also help. We commonly see only the highest salary. Wannabe entrepreneurs, do you recognise a market of one lakh plus here?
-There are some smart alec institutes which initially ask for a fee for the application form/ prospectus and then when one gets the prospectus one has to digest the fact that you have to shell out some hundreds more in the name of transaction/ processing fee. And a clear violation is that they don't even mention that in the initial notifications. Amrita Institute of Management, Coimbatore and International Management Institute, Delhi are examples.
-Institutes, GET REAL. Practice what you preach. We have MDI, Gurgaon that gave an option to apply online. You choose to apply online and again you have to fill in the same details again at the time of the interview in a "brick and mortar" application form. Is this "streamlining of processes"/ "corporatisation of bureaucracy"? Fore School Of Management's website has a link which is supposed
to give the results of the entrance exams. But the feedback for the last one-month on that link is that it is "Under Construction". Are we trying to inculcate the never-ending "foundation stone laying ceremonies? value to the
future managers?
Hope you had a broadband download. Any plans to BPR?
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The author, AJITH SANKAR, is an eccentric who almost went mad writing the
management entrance exams and watching the acrobatic skills of the various
management institutes. He may be contacted at
ajithsrn@ziplip.com 
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