A minute for your Feedback please

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Will ISB's doing a Harvard(YLP program work)?

Harvard Business school(HBS) had launched a 2*2 program in which it admits undergraduates(obviously exceptional candidates) and admits them into its regular program after they get 2 yrs of work experience. This guaranteed admission is targeted at non business streams to attract people into management when they have other options(like pure sciences, CPA etc). Now, ISB has also launched its program titled 'Young leaders program' targeting undergraduates in their penultimate year. It will admit them and permit them to enrol after they get 18months of work experience. Now, unlike the Harvard 2+2 program, ISB's YLP program does not explicitly target unconventional backgrounds. And unlike HBS where it must filter out strong candidates from consulting, investment banking etc, ISB and other Indian Bschools largely deal with  an applicant base consisting largely of engineers with IT experience. So to bring in diversity via the 2+2 program, they would in fact need to target the other education streams like commerce and arts. But this brings in issues of comparability, fairness(aptitude) and also whether this is necessary for those who would anyway do a MBA. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the creme da lae of Indian students with research interests anyway do a M.S abroad and work there. For other streams like commerce & arts, there exist lucrative career options like CA, Actuary, IAS etc. So would this target segment bite at the ISB YLP program? Only time will tell

No comments: