Hyderabad|India|February'2012: While the admission process begins in most of the B-Schools and students gear up to face the Group Discussions/Personal Interview sessions, selection of the ‘best’ from the lot becomes a challenging task for faculties across the premier B-Schools. With CAT score being apparently the primary benchmarkfor selection debate gaining momentum into the challenges faced by the selection committeesand issues like diversity vs merit vs gender.

Different B-Schools have different policies laid down for their selection committees. Many IIMs are in the process of replacing the group discussion (GD) with written test with an objective to provide equal opportunity to everyone to showcase their communication skills. In addition to the complications of normalization, sensitive issues like balancing the gender equationand bringingin diversity in the campus are fresh challenges the selection committee has to now encounter. This essentially means inviting & encouraging students to opt for MBA from non-engineering backgrounds and to offer bonus points to a female applicant.

“We believe that the CAT score is not the only indicator of managerial potential. There are many aspects of management aptitude that are not adequately captured by CAT; and it is not uncommon to find candidates having a low CAT score despite having exceptionally bright managerial potential”, says Dr.Jitendra K Das, Director FORE.

The weightage given to CAT score is only 40% while rest of the 60% weightage is distributed in communication skills (GD : 15%); Personal attributes (Interview PI: 20%); academics : 15% and work experience :10 %, at FORE.


FORE do not have any provision for bonus points for its female applicants or non-engineers. The female students comprises of almost 37% which reflect a well-balanced ratio compared to many premier B-Schools of the country whose gender ratio is utterly skewed.

FORE takes the pride of selecting students from a rich pool of applications which is highly diverse in terms of academic background, culture and work experience from varied industries. They have students from medical fraternity, science and arts background and students coming in from army background, as well. The admission policy framework encourages students from Kashmir to Kochi to seek admissions in the programmes they offer.

In order to make it more open for the students, this year at FORE the CAT score cut-off has been brought down from last year. “Our selection process is designed to select potentially bright candidates. By keeping the CAT cut-off at this level we hope to provide opportunity to those who have a lower CAT score but potentially prove to be a result oriented management professional to get selected ”, echoes Chairperson Admissions – Prof. SanghamitraBuddhapriya, of FORE School of Management, Delhi.

Students from literally all corners of the country apply for admission to FORE. Last year applications poured in from 20 states and this year from 25 states, reflecting the popularity of these two programmes.

FORE has a robust admission policy, being followed for the past couple of years which ensures that equal opportunity is provided to the potential students to prove their merit.