No entrance required, get MBA seats in Maharashtra

In a bid to fill up 2,100 PGDM seats, about 52 b-schools in Maharashtra, for the first time may conduct a centralized admission process for b-school aspirants. The service will hope to net students who have taken any of the entrance tests namely: CAT / MAT / XAT / ATMA / JMET /Maharashtra or any other state level CET and have still not managed to secure admission anywhere.

For those who have not taken a single entrance test and still harbor dreams of doing an MBA, there are thoughts of conducting another specialized CET for them. The 52 schools that come under the body – Consortium of Management Education (COME) threw open their online admission process today through their website.

Single window
According to Dr Apoorva Palkar, Executive President of COME, the idea to initiate this system was to make sure that there would be a single admission avenue for the students. “Why should students wait in long queues at different b-schools or run from one school to another?”, she asked. This system, she hopes, will make admissions a hassle-free process especially as students availing of it will basically be an already-stressed-out lot, not having got admission anywhere this year.

The process
While the number of students who will avail of this facility is yet unknown, COME expects a huge number of aspirants to apply. Advertising for this process will begin from 2 June 2011. The GD/PI along with the written test score and other parameters will be considered for creating a merit list, after the forms are received. According to Dr Palkar, it will be the students who will have the option of choosing an institute. The allocation will be done on the basis of merit and the preferences of the applicant.

The GDPI’s will be held from 8 June to 21 June 2011 at centers in Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Aurangabad, Nasik, Jalgaon, Kolhapur, Hyderabad, New Delhi, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Indore and Jaipur. Results will be declared only by 24 June 2011.

When asked whether this will entail a delayed start to the academic year in the b-schools involved, Dr Palkar said that the sessions in the respective schools will begin only from 15 July 2011. This will delay the process but it is in line with the AICTE guidelines.

No entrance exam
A point worth noting in the new process is that students who have not taken a single entrance exam this year will also be eligible for admission. This may drastically reduce the quality of students that apply through this process. To this Dr Palkar replied, “If the number of students which fall in this category is huge, and if the group members feel the need, COME will propose a CET as per the guidelines of state and Pravesh Niyantran Samiti. If permissions come by, this CET could be held by mid-June. However, this decision is subject to receiving the necessary permissions from the authorities.

Last year, also the Maharastra government had decided to fill some 15,000 MBA seats that were vacant in schools across the state without taking into account the Common Entrance Test (CET). But, Rajesh Tope, Minister for Higher and Technical Education had clearly stated that the rule to allow MBA admissions to students who had not taken a single entrance exam was only for 2010 and would not be carried over to 2011.