IIT Bombay's Management School Revises Eligibility Criteria for MBA programme

The candidates with four year Bachelor Degree or Masters Degree in any discipline with first class (or minimum CPI of 6.5 out of 10) have been eligible for admission to MBA until last year. The minimum eligibility criteria for admission to MBA have been revised and approved by IIT Bombay senate last year. The revised criteria make candidates with three-year Bachelor Degree in any discipline with first class (or minimum CPI of 6.5 out of 10) also eligible for admission to MBA w.e.f. the academic year 2025-26. The 2025-27 batch of MBA will include significant number of candidates from other disciplines unlike the situation until last year when the batches included mostly engineers.

This revision in eligibility criteria is intended to improve the discipline and gender diversity of the cohort given the multi-disciplinary nature of management. The diverse cohort will also help bring different perspectives to the classroom discussion and enrich the learning experience. The case method employed in management education and training also requires diversity in the classroom given the unstructured situations managers are required to deal with as there are no unique solutions or unique algorithms to solve the problems unlike in Science and Engineering.

The recruiting companies have also been facing pressures to improve gender (and discipline) diversity while hiring and planning their human resources and hence many management institutions have been employing different means to improve gender and discipline diversity while admitting students to their management programmes. The continuous and constant feedback in this regard from recruiters visiting SJMSOM is also one of the inputs to the decision to revise the eligibility criteria. There is no reason or justification to restrict the admission to students of engineering and science given the fact that the School is offering a general MBA degree.

The revised eligibility criteria are as follows:

1. Bachelor degree with at least 60% marks (55% in case of candidates belonging to SC/ST/PWD category) or a minimum CPI of 6.5 (6 in case of candidates belonging to SC/ST/PWD category) out of 10 from institutions / universities incorporated by an act of parliament or state legislature in India or other institutions declared to be deemed as University under Section 3 of the UGC Act, 1956, or possess an equivalent qualification recognized by the Ministry of Education, Government of India.

2. Candidates in final year of the degree and those awaiting results can also apply. The applicant should have secured an aggregate of 60% marks (55% in case of candidates belonging to SC/ST/PWD category) or equivalent till the latest exam that has been completed and whose scores are available. The admission will be subject to candidate fulfilling the eligibility criteria.

3. The candidate should have a valid CAT score.

This is in line with the eligibility criteria for admission to MBA programmes offered by other IITs and IIMs and aims to improve discipline and gender diversity, and to have more candidates to select from