"The Future And The DNA Of Management Education Lies In The DOTCOM World"

Online, September 2, 2012 (Newswire.com) - In the August, Dr. Anil Mohan Sherry, Chairperson - Admissions of the IMT Group and Director, IMT CDL , addressed the third MBAUniverse.com Indian Management Conclave (IMC). The IMC is regarded as the central point for facilitating the process of dialogue and delivery in Indian Management education. Incidentally, Dr. Sherry has been invited to share his vision in all three gatherings of this prominent think-tank of business education in the country.

For his speech in the 'Lessons from the Leaders' segment of the IMC 2012, Dr Sherry was introduced to the host of policy makers, Directors from top Indian & International B-schools, and academic thought leaders,as the person who manages two extremely challenging tasks for the IMT group - ensuringadmissions of the right students in large numbers in IMT campuses across the globe, and managing themost modernIMT-CDLprogramme.In his inimitable style, Dr. Sherry began his address with a rather profound incident.

"During the admission process last year, one of the panelists during the interview asked a candidate the difference between 'complete' and 'finish'. 'When you marry the right person, you are complete; and when you marrya wrong person, you are finished!' the candidate replied.

The gathering of luminaries erupted into laughter. When the laughter died down, Dr. Sherry continued, "My point is, are we following the right approach for getting the right candidate to our institutes, or are we following the wrong approach to 'finish' our organisation's target and ultimately'finish' our institutes?"

Having sounded this thought-provoking caution to the distinguished audience, Dr. Sherry then ventured to elaborate upon the changing mind-set of the MBA aspirant in the sea of choices available to him -an increasing number of IIMs, other top institutes opening new campuses across the country, American and European colleges aggressively wooing top Indian students and the impact of social media.

"Over my last ten year in the admission field, the pace of change in admission strategy has been the fastest in the last three years. So is there any mantra for admissions today? At IMT we use a very simple framework for admissions, called the 'three Ps' approach. The first 'P' is'Profile' - the educational and professional background;the second 'P'is a student's'Psyche'or mindset; while the third 'P' is the student's'Practices', or habits. We constantly keep monitoring the changes in the'three Ps' of good students. We also observe how we change our internal 'three Ps' of admissions - admission philosophy, practices and processes - to align with the students''three Ps'. There have been a lot of changes in the students''three Ps' over the last three years. If you see the 'profile' of the applicant, good applicants now come with2-3 years of work experience, mostly from IT and telecom companies who are, interestingly, dissatisfied with their present job and want to change their profile. Earlier, the trend was that freshers were more interested in an MBA programme. So what are the implications for the admission departments? First of all, this lot is a smarter one because they have two or three years of work experience. They ask very smart questions and you can't just convince them on general statement like 'best faculty, best placement'. They need more information related to the alumni group, industry interactions, past records and so on. So what are we are doing at IMT? We are providing them with deeper, richer and specific information through our online programme."

Dr. Sherry then went on to outline the changed admission philosophy of the IMT Group, based on the changed 'three Ps' of the students.

"The Convocation is a very important activity in any business school. But how canone turn it into an opportunity to showcase the best the institute can offer? If you take a look at our online portal, it is structured in a dynamic way. The website banner on the top reads 'Good Luck IMT Batch 2012',with an article at the bottom. We use the top banner to showcase the studentachievements. We also use the story at the bottom to playback 2011, highlighting excellence in faculty, ranking and student activity. We specifically wanted to highlight the charitable activities ofIMT students. So we linked the relevant keyword in this article to a separate story we had done earlier in the year showcasing the social responsibility undertaken by our students. It is important to create content which is fresh, specific and richfor these aspirants."

Talking about the 'Psyche' of the aspirants, Dr. Sherry, Director IMT-CDL , observed that students were less dependent on parents for making decisions. Owing to the blitzkrieg of information that an individual is subjected to today, word of mouth has become far more important than rankings and newspaper advertisements.

"That's why our main focus has been on online branding and online publicity in the last 2-3 years. So that when aspirants search online, they will find out how we are different from the other players. For instance, we have a story related to the IMT Nagpur campus about its sprawling 27-acre green campus, and its red-brick buildings. New students can actually get a feel of the campus."

Dr. Sherry pointed out that online campaigns can be remarkably innovative and very quick when it comes to implementation.

"This year we added the Pre-Foundation module to our curriculum for new students. This module is entirely online, through which students can review the fantastic faculty, and what students can expect on joiningIMT Ghaziabad."

Dr. Sherry, Director, IMT-CDL , concluded that the entire MBA universe has moved to the dotcom space. "The future and the DNA of management education liesin the dotcom world", he said, prompting a huge round of applause.