AHMEDABAD: In what it claimed to be the beginning of the reversal of a process where students from abroad will be coming for studies in India, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, has finalised the One-year Post Graduate Programme in Management for Executives (PGPX), the first of its kind in the country.

Sixty-seven students from 10 countries are joining the course beginning next April.

IIMA Director Bakul Dholakia and the chairman of the committee to develop the curriculum for the PGPX course, Prof. G. Raghuram, said the initial programme that attracted over 770 applicants was a runaway success. After putting students through its rigorous tests based on GMAT scores and leadership profiling, the IIMA decided to interview 232 students of whom 71 were offered admission and 67, including five women, accepted it. Of the 770 applications received, about 230 were from abroad and an IIMA faculty team specially visited other countries to interview the applicants.

Prof. Dholakia said the IIMA planned to start the new batch with about 50 students. Considering that the acceptance rate in such courses was about 60 to 70 per cent, 71 students were selected for the offer, but the batch size had gone up to 67 due to the very high acceptance rate. For the second batch beginning in April, 2007, for which the preparations have started, the IIMA has decided to increase the intake to 120 students and raised the fees from about Rs. 8 lakhs in the first batch to about Rs. 10 lakhs.

Claiming that the performance level of the students joining the first batch was better than most of the internationally-reputed business schools in the world, Prof. Dholakia said the average GMAT score of the students admitted was 700, the average work experience they had was about nine years, including an average international work experience of 42 months, and they had an average income of about Rs. 17 lakhs. Though 24 of the 26 students from abroad are non-resident Indians, four of them are foreign nationals and five others are permanent foreign residents. The participant profile would be among the best in the world for one year full-time MBAs for executives, Prof Dholakia claimed.

He said the main idea behind formulating the course was to attract overseas participants by giving case method of learning supplemented with lectures, seminars, games, role plays, industrial visits and group exercises to develop a holistic perspective in dealing with unstructured situations and facilitating decision-making and leadership quality in a real-life uncertain scenario.

The course would have special Indian and Asian packages to educate the participants about the business scenario in India and Asia, currently the "destination of happenings.'' It would also include a five-week course where each student would be required to participate in foreign ventures and prepare project reports.

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