In the wake of the coronavirus lockdown, Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are contemplating starting this year’s academic session a bit late.
According to Business Standard, India’s premier B-schools including IIM-Ahemdabad and IIM-Bangalore are thinking of starting their flagship two-year postgraduate programmes in management in August. Usually, IIM academic session starts in July.
IIM Ahemdabad’s chairperson Vishal Gupta and IIM-Bangalore director G Raghuram told the daily that they were planning to commence sessions from the first week of August this year as against the usual mid-June. B-schools typically send out shortlists by April 10 which this year was done on May 8.
IIM, on Friday, released the final shortlist of the candidate for the MBA/PGP programs for the batch of 2020. Usually, to take admission in IIMs, candidates have to go for a six-month-long process of tests and interviews where the admission process begins in January with the announcement of the result of the Common Admission Test and ends with final batch selection in June.
Shubhasis Dey, admissions chair, IIM Kozhikode told the daily that at his branch, the shortlist of candidates for PG programme used to be out by April 30. However, due to the lockdown, they have decided to delay the list. Dey assured that the COVID-19 lockdown would not affect the batch selection date, which is June 30.
This year, IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Bangalore that usually releases the shortlists much earlier also delayed their process to start from May 8.
Vishal Gupta, Chairperson – Admissions, IIM Ahmedabad said that they typically send out invitations to shortlisted candidates in the first week of April but this year the final selection result was released on May 8. Mr. Gupta also stated that the admission process for the new batch was already completed prior to the lockdown, as its only three month long processes starting from January with shortlisting for interviews and ends in March with the final selection of candidates, but the results are declared late due to the lockdown.
