The one-year full-time MBA for Executives program at IIM Calcutta continues to witness a substantial presence of students with IT/ITES industry background.

Earlier known as the Post Graduate Program for Executives (PGPEX), it was recently renamed as MBAEx. It follows the decision of the IIM’s Board of Directors to grant degree certificates instead of diplomas to students of its one-year and two-year full-time management education courses.

IIM Calcutta MBAEx Class of 2020

The Class comprises 63 students with an average age of 31 years. They come from diverse backgrounds, including 15 industries, innumerable functional areas and 51 organizations.

The cohort has an average work experience of 8.75 years. About 17% of the batch has prior international work experience with an average international work experience of one year. The batch has a median GMAT score of 690 and a maximum of 750. Engineers form 90% of the class and 10% of the students have Post Graduate degree.

The current batch has greater gender diversity compared to the previous batch. Last year, the female candidates’ strength was 9% of the batch strength which has increased to 11% this year.

MBAEx Class Industry background

While 41% of the students have IT / ITES industry background, 17% come from Manufacturing, followed by 11% Energy / Oil / Gas, 9% Financial Services, 6% Consulting, 3% each in Analytics and Infrastructure, 2% each in Shipping, Aerospace, Defence, FMCG and Healthcare.

MBAEx Class Work Experience

The majority of the students, 51%, come with 5-8 years of full-time work experience followed by 33% with 8-11 years, 13% with 11-14 years and 3% with 14-17 years.

MBAEx Program Chairman’s Comments

Amit Dhiman, Chairperson, MBAEx said the program, since its inception in 2006, has undergone several changes to a stage where the world has started taking note of it.

He said IIMC started participating from the year 2017 onwards in the annual FT MBA Global ranking. the MBAEx ranking improved from 95th in the year 2017 to 78th in 2018  and jumped to 49^th rank in 2019.

Over the years, the batch strength of around 39 in the first batch has gone up to 66. “We have calibrated this increase very carefully with our experience in being able to fulfill various objectives of the program.

“The composition of the class itself has undergone significant change. The diversity in the batches has been increasing in the last couple of years and that is a positive sign of a maturing academic program,” he said.

“We have had in recent years students with a background as diverse as lawyers, dentists, architects and defense, apart from usual suspects- IT / ITES! The current batch has students from Oil and Gas, Biopharmaceuticals, Defence, IT / ITES, Manufacturing, automobile among others,” he added.

The academic structure of the program has undergone a transformation over recent years. The teaching load was reduced from 810 contact hours to 690 hours a few years back. In the revised structure, more experiential sessions, workshops, seminars, talks by senior executives and so on were included.

The curriculum was restructured to make it more sharply focused on the experienced participants. The number of elective courses in proportion to the compulsory courses was increased significantly.

“We offered a wide array of electives courses numbering around 44 last year for students to choose from. This is among the largest bouquet of electives offered anywhere in India for a similar program,” he said.

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