No, there won’t be any difference in chances. CAT accepts IGNOU degrees. So, you will be eligible to take CAT. If you score above IIM Ahmedabad cut off and have a decent profile, you can get admission.
IIM Ahmedabad 2018-20 batch had a student who graduated from IGNOU. So, doing graduation from IGNOU won’t limit your chances of admission.
According to IIM Ahmedabad's previous year final placement report, the highest salary offered was Rs 55.88 lakh per annum, and the international salary was Rs 1.32 crore per annum. The IIM Ahmedabad placement process for the 2020 academic year was divided into three clusters. A total of 153 companies participated in IIM Ahmedabad's placement drive, offering 182 job roles to students who took part.
The IIMA placement committee invites top recruiters from around the world to visit the campus and recruit students for various positions. The placement committee also provides students with training through various activities such as workshops, group discussions, mock interviews, and many more. Several companies from various industries, including IT, telecom, consulting, FMCG, and digital media, participated in IIMA placements.
A friend of mine attended the interview for the 2021 batch of IIM Ahmedabad. Here is his experience in brief.
The interview took place in a video conferencing room. There were two panelists. It lasted for 20 minutes and to my friend’s surprise, it was more of a conversation rather than an interview. He was mostly asked about his job, his published paper, hobbies, and why MBA.
Here are some of the questions from his interview.
They also asked some current affairs questions. Overall, it was a good experience for my friend and he was able to convert.
Shikha Sharma was in the 1978-80 batch. Here are a few of the things that I heard about her from some of my friends at the institute.
She recollects later in life that this was because of the fact that she could never oversell herself at that time.
One of the most significant reasons why ISB is at par with IIM Ahmedabad is because of the fact that only these two MBA programs have successfully been figured in the top MBA programs of the world.
Getting a lot of participation and contributions from international faculty obviously helped a great deal. ISB has almost half the faculty as visiting faculty which is very advantageous in bringing in industry experience and letting the students learn first-hand.
Almost all the other top business schools in India were quite rigid when it came to their curriculum and study pattern. The other B schools are very less adaptable to the ever changing industry standards and hence there was a special need to address this gap. That’s where ISB Hyderabad came in the picture and posed as a strong alternative for IIM Ahmedabad.
The fact that ISB has kept its curriculum open to changes in the industry regularly, it has ensured that it stays a notch ahead of the other B schools. The international faculty here is also good.
Not to mention their alumni who are amazing leaders, managers and operational heads at several leading firms across the globe.
ISB Hyderabad has ensured that all its students have the capabilities to do wonders.
It’s good that you are starting your MBA preparation from your first year. This will definitely give you a head start. IIM Ahmedabad is a great place to study but it needs a lot of effort. To clear the CAT entrance examination, you have to do exceptionally well in aptitude. CAT is one of the toughest examinations in India. This is so tough that even the students who perform great in their academics end up scoring 55-65% in the CAT examination.
At this stage, you should mainly focus on your graduation degree and prepare from the aptitude in parallel with the degree for the CAT exam. Always keep a track of the latest syllabus as there is a change in pattern. To get admission to IIM Ahmedabad, you need to attain more than 99.9 percentile in the entrance exam, and along with that, you will need a strong academic background, i.e. good marks in 10th, 12th, and in graduation also.
Some important tips that you can follow are, as here.
Hope this helps.
IIM Ahmedabad charges high fees to maintain its cutting-edge facilities, top-notch infrastructure, high-end research facilities, it offers. They need to charge high to meet these costs. Also, IIMs are autonomous and they don’t receive much funding from the government. The majority of their funding comes from the program fees.
However, for students in need of financial help, IIM Ahmedabad has many scholarships and students loans on offer.
Although IIM Ahmedabad is not the best HR campus, it is the best in its class. Furthermore, it is believed that the 'Specialization' thing should not be dependent on the institute, but rather on what a person sees their career as being in. Choose wisely, regardless of the institute, because you will have to live with it for many years.
IIM Ahmedabad does not offer an HR specialization. However, you can always add more HR electives to your PGP program in the second year to help your cause. If you are certain that you want to work in human resources, apply to XLRI or TISS. They offer the best HRM education in India.
You should have a CGPA in the range of 8-8.5 or above to get a shortlist in IIM Ahmedabad. The institute also considers 10tth, 12th academic scores, CAT score, and work experience for shortlisting. If you have a GPA less than 8, you need to score around 99.95 in CAT, to get a call.
Students getting admission at IIM Ahmedabad usually have past academics - 90/90/85 and a CAT score of around 99.85+.
Without any doubt, there is an importance of every step of the admission that you go through. It depends upon the demand in IIMs every year.
Lastly, we can say that there is no particular deadline that is already being decided, it depends upon year to year. So starting from the conduct of the exams to the entire admission process, there is a variation in every particular year.