Management, Education, Lifestyle, Business, Technology, Personal Development

How To Build Your ISB YLP Application

Indian School of Business (ISB) is one of the most prestigious business schools in India. ISB offers world class management education across its two campuses – Hyderabad and Mohali. Recently, the school received the accreditation from the Association of MBA’s (AMBA), making it in the select 100 schools in the world to achieve “triple crown” of accreditations from AMBA, EQUIS, and the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).

Accreditation from AMBA represents the highest standard of achievement in post-graduate business education. Its rigorous assessment criteria ensure that only the highest calibre programs, which demonstrate the best standards in teaching, curriculum, and student interaction, achieve association of MBA(s) accreditation.

Every “MBA” aspirant dreams of securing admission into ISB’s flagship one-year PGP (Post Graduate Programme) in Management, which is currently ranked #28 (as per FT Global MBA Rankings 2020) among all other global management programs. ISB is one of the youngest schools to attain a consistent ranking among the world’s leading global management programmes.

Now, many people may ask this – Does ISB offer an MBA degree?

The answer is – No! As a matter of fact, most of the business schools in India offered diploma(s) for PGP in management up till 2017. IIM-Act 2017 declared 20 existing Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) as institutions of national importance and conferred on them the power to grant degrees. The important thing is - The diploma from ISB has more value than most formal MBA degrees in India. The fact that ISB does not grant degrees will not hamper your placements or career growth in any way!

ISB, Mohali Campus

Admission Options and Deadlines

Moving back to the agenda, how to go about applying to ISB?

There are basically 3 ways of getting into ISB’s globally recognized PGP in management:

  1. Young Leader’s Programme (YLP) – Deferred Admission

    2. One can apply via the YLP process if and only if the applicant is in the pre-final or final year of the undergraduate study.

  2. Early Entry Option (EEO) – Deferred Admission

    3. One can apply via the EEO process if and only if the applicant is a recent graduate and has a minimum of 0 months and a maximum of 24 months of full-time work experience.

  3. PGP Admissions

    4. One can apply via PGP process if the applicant has more than 24 months of full-time work experience.

All the three aforementioned processes have a similar admission procedure, except for the deadlines and admission cycles. The PGP and EEO process share the same deadlines and have 3 admission cycles annually, whereas the YLP process has only 1 admission cycle annually with different deadlines set accordingly.

ISB Admission Cycles

The YLP/EEO admission cycle starts from the last week of March and lasts up till November.

But amid all the disruptions due to corona virus, the programme timelines are bound to change. Even the PGP batch of 2021 has new course timelines with new the course curriculum, PGP 2.0. But that is a topic for some other time!

Admission Process

The admission procedure for all the three processes are similar to a great extent. But ISB expects and looks for different traits in an applicant from different applicant pools – YLP, EEO, and PGP:

  • Academic Credentials – Class 10th, Class 12th, Undergraduate Transcripts, GMAT/GRE scores
  • Leadership Potential – Past leadership positions, experiences, etc.
  • Personal Attributes – Unique traits, like - frame of mind, values, beliefs, etc.

For further analysis, one can always check out the ISB class profile here. This can turn out to be a great exercise to analyse gaps in your profile/resume and work towards them.

Planning
Analysing

The whole admission process is fairly long and robust and is spread over three rounds, where in the applicant is involved for over several months in making the dream come true.

Round/Stage 1: (General Deadline - 25th March)

  1. General Application Filling

    2. The form asks for your education details, five major awards and accomplishments, five major extra-curricular activities, and hobbies. Now, it is very important to fill out your best and most recognized awards and accomplishments. That will help you stand out and have an edge over others (remember, other applicants are no ordinary applicants). As far as extra-curricular activities are concerned, one can go about filling important internships, college club participation, volunteering work, etc.

  2. Essay Submission (1)

    3. No doubt, this is the most important aspect of your stage 1 application. The topics tend to change every year. But the important thing is to reflect yourself, your motive to pursue an MBA, and your intent to join ISB, in your essay. In order to inculcate these, one needs to introspect a lot for finding the root influential causes for the inclination towards pursuing a management course/degree. In my honest opinion, a story telling approach never fails in these types of essays. A story can strongly reflect your inner-self and your intent to pursue management.

Round/Stage 2: (General Deadline – 31st August)

  1. GMAT/GRE Score Submission (Yes, ISB does consider your GRE test scores as well!)

    2. Arguably, the most vital thing in your whole application. Some rightly say that your GMAT/GRE scores can either earn you a one-way ticket to ISB or ruin your admission chances for good. The median GMAT and GRE scores for ISB are 710 and 326 respectively. It is always better to assume a good test score to be 15-20 (GMAT) and 5-7 (GRE) points above the median, bringing a good GMAT/GRE score to be 730 and 333 respectively. To know more about how to go about preparing for GMAT, click here.

    Mistake #1 – I did not start my GMAT prep until 10-15 days after ISB announced results for stage 1 applications. I had a bare minimum of 2 months to prepare for GMAT, with my 6-week on-site summer technical internship going on the other hand. It took me two consecutive attempts to barely ace the examination with 1 day to spare in my stage 2 application submission.
    Solution #1 - If you have not taken the GMAT exam before applying to ISB, please start preparing for it right after stage-1 application submission. I repeat, DO NOT WAIT FOR STAGE-1 CLEARANCE CONFIRMATION FROM ISB, YOU WILL SIMPLY WASTE TIME!!
  2. Essay Submission (2)

    3. This time, you will have 2 more essays to submit. Along the same introspection (as did in the stage 1), one needs to carefully draft coherent essays, depicting same values, morals, and intention to pursue management from ISB.

  3. Evaluation/ Letter of Recommendation

    4. This not only provides a boost to your whole stage 2 application, but also validates your professional and personal profile. It is very important for ISB to know as much as possible about you. Please ensure that the evaluator takes this recommendation seriously, as this recommendation has the potential to provide the necessary stimulus to your ISB application.

  4. Resume/Curriculum Vitae (CV)

    5. Well, for YLP applicants, there is no strict resume format. Neither there are any restrictions on the number of pages in the CV. I, personally went in with a two-pager CV. But now when I think about it, it’s always better to go with a sophisticated one-pager resume that is relevant and easy to read. Needless to say, the resume should precisely highlight your most substantial achievements, leadership potential, and so on and so forth.

  5. Essential Documents

    6. This includes your grade 10th & grade 12th marksheets, college transcripts, statement of integrity, passport, etc.

Round/Stage 3: (Generally in October-November)

  1. Personal Interview (On Campus)

    2. If you have made it till here, kudos to you for being among the blue blood. You have almost a 50% chance of getting into ISB now. At this stage, one only needs to remember this – ISB is only looking for 3 things:

    • Why MBA?
    • Why ISB?
    • What after MBA?

    One has to be prepared with anything that might come up in the conversation. Presence of mind, which is difficult to maintain after hours of waiting for your turn to come up, is of utmost importance. Every applicant must understand that MBA is not magic. MBA is just a tool that enables you to apply yourself and become what you WANT to become. It is not wise to give out cliché replies to why do you want to do an MBA. You need to think about it!

    It is also very rudimentary to know exactly what MBA from ISB will do to you! You must think about your future plans. I say plans because, one cannot rely on a single plan of action. Contingency plans need to be in place. A full clarity about the future uncertainties will help you decide what’s good for you and what’s not!

Congratulations Cheers GIF from Congratulations GIFs

Congratulations! You made the cut :D

The one clearing all three rounds is the lucky one (among less than 1 percent of the applicant pool, crème de la crème) to get an offer letter from ISB. The only thing left to do now will be to block the seat at ISB by paying the required fees (generally around INR 1 lac) and relax!

Many candidates do apply and secure seats in more business schools in order to weigh their options and take the best decision possible. But that’s that!

For people not shortlisted for further stages, please don’t lose hope. One can always apply next year. FYI, ISB has a different set of guidelines for evaluating all the re-applicants. For all they know, all re-applicants are the most driven people around. Or perhaps, there is something better out there for you. The crux is to never leave hope and keep trying hard to get what you want!

Hope this helped bring some clarity in your mind about ISB’s admission procedure and how to go about preparing your application! If you think this might help someone who is looking to apply to ISB, please share the article with them.

Share
Share