ISB Invites Rejected Applicants To Re-Apply
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ISB invites rejected applicants to re-apply

Marketing Executive
The Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, the only Indian B-School to make it to the Financial Times Global MBA ranking of top 100 management institutionshas invited MBA applicants that it had rejected last year to re-apply . These rejects will be allowed to re-apply at one-third the application fee which is currently Rs 3,000.

The letter sent out to rejects states, “... the processing our backend team has to do in terms of reapplications is significantly less and thus cost us less. We would thus like to pass on this advantage to you and incentivise your reapplication to the ISB. Your application to the ISB as a re-applicant will now cost you Rs one thousand only.

According to a senior official at ISB, this is the first time that the institution is reducing the fee for re-applicants . Many of them, however, were rather surprised on receiving the email from ISB, whose course fees amount to Rs 20 lakh a year. They feel its the recession effect, with the B-School afraid that they may lose out on students during the financial crisis. A number of applicants who spoke to us were rejected while applying for the 2008-09 batch, and have now been asked to re-apply for the 2010-2011 batch and not for the 2009-10 batch which has already begun.

In addition to re-applicants, a student who had not even applied to ISB, but who had mentioned ISB as one of his top preferences while giving his GMAT exams, was invited to apply to ISB this year. When we contacted the ISB Public Relations Officer, this scribe was put in touch with three officials, who offered somewhat contradictory versions.

An official who works on backend processes said this was a routine email sent out every year. He was unable to explain why the 2008-09 rejects were not invited to re-apply for the 2009-10 batch. However, a senior official went on to say that this was the first time that ISB was allowing students to re-apply at a lower rate.

These students have already paid the institute Rs 3,000 when applying for the first time. When we went through our data base, we found many students of excellent calibre being rejected because of the competitive pool of applicants applying. Each year, we get a lot of re-applicants. We have found that, since we already have their data with us, there is far less expenditure on them, he added. He says the recession has nothing to do with the fact that India’s premier B-School is sending out re-application letters to its rejects. In fact, we have twice the number of people applying to us now, he says.
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