How to get aspiring elite MBAs with no particular interest in Indian careers to earn an “Indian” MBA? That question partly explained the invitation this and 15 other admissions consultants received to come to ISB last week as guests of the school. Yet ISB’s most distinguishing characteristic–its identification with India–may also be the challenge that has kept it from translating its obvious quality into the kind of brand power that puts even relatively new schools like INSEAD in a higher league (at least in applicants’ eyes). ISB’s rapid success is all the more remarkable given that global success has meant going against the grain of Indian management education, from refusing government money (and therefore government admissions quotas), emphasizing research, and insisting that applicants accumulate work experience before applying to filling 28% of its class with women, when India’s IIMs manage only 10%. In a decade’s time it has managed to earn Financial Times’ blessing as the thirteen-best business school globally, an impressive 717 average GMAT for its admitted students, and year-in-year-out placement success with firms like Google, McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, Boston Consulting Group, and Microsoft. First conceived in the late 1990s with the explicit goal of becoming “an internationally top-ranked, research-driven, independent management institution that grooms future leaders for India and the world,” ISB has leveraged India’s corporate elite (the CEOs of 30-40% of the Indian stock exchange sit on its board) and early academic partners like Wharton and Kellogg to aim for the fences from its groundbreaking in 1999. For a business school that was little more than an idea ten years ago, the Indian School of Business has come a very long way.
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