Mumbai: Indian Institutes of Management have decided to continue with the existing admission system of conducting group discussions and personal interviews independently, at least for this year.

With the new IIMs starting operations this academic season, the Union human resource development ministry had asked the management schools to draw up a common admission process so that students are saved the trouble of travelling to various campuses.

However, some of the IIMs have already started putting in place arrangements to conduct their admissions independently. Chairman (admissions) at one of the IIMs said there were two issues that were coming in the way of a unified admission process: IIMs having varied admission criteria and the lack of time to design a common admission process.
"The glitches that took place because of the CAT have left us with no time to conduct common group discussions and personal interviews this year," said another head of admissions.

Sources in the HRD ministry said that four of the IIMs in Trichy, Haryana, Rajasthan and Jharkhand are likely to start operations this year. Directors of all the IIMs are scheduled to meet union HRD minister Kapil Sibal later this week and inform him that some of the older IIMs will conduct the admission process for the new institutes.

This decision will mean that a large number of students will have to hop from one campus to another corner in the country. The small percentage of the brightest who will get a call from all the IIMs are expected to go to some of the older B-schools.

"But a lot of issues will come into play for the large majority who will get calls from the younger IIMs like Kozhikode, Indore, Lucknow and Shillong and the absolutely new ones," explained an IIM-A faculty member.