The Indian School of Business is amongst the top business schools in India and also holds its own on the global stage. Prospective students often wonder about the criteria for ISB Admission 2024. But what kind of students actually make it to ISB? What are the average GMAT and GRE scores for recent batches, how old is the average student, what is the engineers / non-engineer skew, and how much pre-MBA work experience does the majority of the batch have? Here's a breakdown of ISB's batch profiles over the past three years that answers (most of) these questions based on publicly available data.
ISB Admission 2024: Average GMAT at 716, average GRE at 330 at ISB
Note: All GMAT and GRE score figures are for the mid-80% of the batch, and not for the entire MBA batch. This means the lowest and highest GMAT / GRE scores have not been included in this assessment. All data was obtained from the institute's official website.
- The average GMAT, which was 720 up till last year, has come down to 716, which is about an 87th percentile score.
- The median GMAT has remained consistent at 710, which is about an 87th percentile score.
- The average GRE is the highest over three years, at 330. QA and VA breakup is currently not available.
- The median GRE for the batch of 2024 is 329. QA and VA breakup is currently not available.
Note: Does ISB prefer GMAT or GRE, and how does it weigh out the two scores? ISB considers both GMAT and GRE scores, and isn't partial toward either of the two exams. Your chances of admission do not go up / down based on which exam you take. Additionally, there isn't any scientific foundation to
compare GMAT and GRE scores. Learn more about
why GMAT and GRE score comparison doesn't make sense.
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Majority of the batch with 3-5 years of work experience at ISB
- The majority of ISB's batch has about zero to five years of work experience. In fact, over the past three years, there's been a gradual increase in the percentage of students with less than three years of experience (including via the YLP and EEO admission routes).
- Folks with 8+ years of experience are a relative minority at ISB. However, in absolute numbers, this means there've about 50+ such students at ISB in any given batch over the past three years, which is a significant number.
- Over the past three years, ISB appears to have maintained a steady intake of applicants with 5-8 years of work experience, who make up about a quarter of the total batch.
Note: How much experience is too much for ISB? While there isn't a clear demarcation for what "8+" years of work experience really means, we can infer some information from data on the institute's website:
- ISB's website quotes a work experience range of "2 to 25 years" for PGP applicants. Additionally, students aged 40 years have been known to be admitted to the institute (though these cases are few and far between).
- The batch profile statistics on the institute's page indicate that about 13% of the batch comprises students aged above 30, which comes down to an estimated work experience range of about 9+ years.
- ISB's PGPMAX program is targeted to applicants with 10-25 years of work experience. This means about 10 years of experience is likely the 'risk-free' work experience cap for ISB's PGP program.
Unfortunately, there isn't a definitive answer to "how much experience is too much" when it comes to ISB. However, based on these inferences, a good guess would be that anywhere between 0-10 years of work experience is suitable for ISB's PGP program.
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ISB Admission 2024: Average work experience at 4.40 years at ISB
- Over three years, the average work experience for ISB's PGP batch is about 4 to 4.5 years. In three years, the batch of 2024 has the highest average work experience of 4.4 years, compared to about 4.10 years in previous years.
- Diversity at ISB is gradually growing, with the %age of women in the batch going from 38% for the batch of 2022 to 41% for the batch of 2024. Generally, over the past five years or so, the percentage of women at ISB has hovered around 40%.
- ISB's Class of 2024 has a 1:1 ratio of engineers to non-engineers, with non-engineers actually making up the majority of the batch. This is up significantly from two years ago, when the batch profile skew was towards engineers (making up 57% of the batch).
- The average age for the batch hovers around 27 years.
Read Next → ISB Placement Report 2023: Slowdown in Salary Growth
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