Dear Mr. Manas,
This is with reference to your concern/grievance about not being able to appear for the Personal Interview process for admission to PGP 2017 of IIMB.
The PGP 2017 Admission Process document which is available on our website since September 2016, very clearly mentions that overseas candidates applying with a GMAT score, if shortlisted for the PI process, are required to appear for the PI/WAT process either ‘in person’ or through ‘video conferencing’
On 22nd February 2017, you and all the other GMAT applicants who were shortlisted for the PI/WAT process were clearly informed of all the dates and the cities in India where the ‘in person’ interviews were being held.
On 4th March 2017, the exact date and time of the video conferencing interview (the panel was meeting for one day on 21st March) were communicated to all shortlisted candidates, after factoring in, the time difference between India and the candidate’s current location.
In your case, as of 4th March, you had informed the admissions office by email that there is a ‘strong possibility’ that you may have a business travel on scheduled date of the interview. Subsequently, over several phone calls, the admissions office clearly communicated to you, our inability to reschedule the ‘video conferencing’ based interview to another day due to logistics constraints of delaying the interviews any longer than what was scheduled. Admittedly, neither was your travel confirmed, nor was a travel ticket booked as on 4th March and we now notice that your ticket was actually issued only on 13th March.
During all this discussion, the option of appearing for an ‘in person’ interviews always existed as was clearly communicated to all the candidates right from the beginning of the admissions process. It is blatantly incorrect, on your part to say that you got this option with just 2 days’ notice. It now appears that you were just not willing to consider or exercise this option of ‘in-person’ interviews, and were unreasonably trying to push IIMB to do a video conferencing interview on another day. Your inflexibility to consider feasible options is accentuated by the fact that you were indeed traveling to India, and could have, with prompt effort scheduled the travel in a manner as to be able to appear for in-person interviews.
Just as you expressed your inability to reschedule the tickets booked by your company, similar concerns of cost and accountability of a much higher magnitude are to be considered at the institutional level. Needless to add, our planning and scheduling of each interview panel, which consists of 2 faculty members and 1 senior alumni member, involves several of our faculty members traveling, and conducting interviews across various cities in the country over a period of 5 weeks.
You also refer to your suggestion of conducting the interview over skype and you say that “all that is needed is a laptop with internet connectivity”. This only indicates your ignorance about the PI/WAT process. The process is not just simply about getting a skype connection and talking to the candidate. There is also a Written Ability Test preceding the interview, for which there are specific standard processes.
Every year we reschedule interviews — subject to feasibility — for a number of applicants (both domestic and international) to accommodate their constraints. We do this for all of our programs, and for both freshers (who may have exam conflicts) as well as for experienced professionals. We treat all the candidates with respect and dignity. This is true for ‘experienced professionals’ as well as ‘straight out of college CAT applicants’.
For overseas applicants we have routinely done video conferencing interviews at odd hours — very early hours or even late in the evening — to accommodate the time differences, and have also accommodated them for ‘in person’ interviews. In fact, for admissions to PGP 2017, we have interviewed six of the overseas applicants in Mumbai and Delhi, based on their prompt requests. Where ever there is even a remote possibility of accommodating an applicant’s request we have always gone to great lengths to accommodate the request. But if it is not feasible, we clearly communicate the same to the applicant. It is completely wrong to assume that one can remain inflexible and attempt to interfere with the scheduled processes and influence the decisions by creating ‘more and more noise’ or by trying to influence through alumni, marketing spokesperson etc., The admissions office spent a huge amount of time talking to you over phone, trying to explain the constraints, and suggest options. If there is a prompt request and it is feasible we certainly accommodate the request, and for any reason if it is not feasible we clearly inform the candidate.
Regarding the issue on payment of application fee, there is absolutely no need to use only a card issued in India. We get a number of payments with the international cards, without any problem. IIMB doesn’t keep any double payments received from the applicants. We understand that you have been wrongly debited for a failed transaction. We have checked with our payment gateway provider and have now received confirmation that the refund of excess amount has been processed successfully on 18th of July. We request you to check with your bank and confirm receipt of the refund amount. We regret the delay in processing the refund.
We wish you all the very best in all your academic and professional pursuits.
PS: we are also posting this response on the Public Grievance Portal
