Aspiring managers defer admission at IIM Ahmedabad for work

Aspiring managers who clear Common Admission Test (CAT) and second round of admission at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad are increasingly opting to defer their admission for work experience.
The deferred admission system was introduced in 2015 for students wishing to take admission at the premier B-School but seek work experience before joining the institute. Students who are eligible for admission as per CAT score and clear admission round are allowed to postpone their admission for work purpose up to a maximum of two years. Around 10 per cent of seats have been kept for those putting off their admission, which comes to around 40 seats for a batch size of 400 students. As per the institute, 24 students chose to defer admission in 2015, which grew to 31 each in 2016 and 2017, while 25 deferred their admissions in 2018.

"We offer deferment up to maximum 10 per cent of the total seats, i.e. 39 candidates can get deferment in a given year. This scheme is meant for candidates with less than two years of work experience to gain/ enrich their work experience before joining the PGP. Deferment requests on grounds of medical, financial, family emergencies or to pursue higher studies are not entertained. Period of deferment is maximum of two years," said Chairperson (admissions) Prof Vishal Gupta.

Students have to shell out Rs 1 lakh as deferment fee in addition to the course fee for Post Graduate Program in Management. Kartikey Gupta appeared for CAT in 2015 and was eligible for admission in IIMs and other B-schools for the batch of 2016-18. Kartikeya scored 99.42 percentile in CAT and cleared second round of admission at IIMA. He chose to defer admission for two years and is enrolled in the 2018-20 batch now.

"I was fresh out of college. At that time, I had an offer from Boston Consulting Group, so I chose to work with them for two years," he said.

Gupta said, methodology of teaching at IIMA is based on case studies. "If a student has work experience, that gives them hands-on experience and helps in understanding the practicality of management. I don't mean to say that freshers may face challenge, smart students will catch up on studies but having work experience has a certain edge," he argued.

Asked about reasons for B-school not getting the full quota of students opting for deferment, he said that the number of fresher students getting admission at IIMs may not be high, probably the reason they are not able to able to fill all the seats meant for deferments.