IIT Bombay opens MBA admissions to non-engineers with revised eligibility criteria

Until last year, candidates with four-year bachelor’s degree or master’s degree in any discipline with first class (or minimum CPI of 6.5 out of 10) have been eligible for admission to MBA. According to the institute, this resulted in mostly engineers joining the MBA programme.

Until recently, engineering was the only discipline offering a four-year bachelor’s degree, which resulted in the majority of students admitted to the MBA programme at SJMSOM coming from engineering background by default.

As per the revised eligibility criteria, “The 2025-27 batch of MBA will include a significant number of candidates from other disciplines unlike the situation until last year when the batches included mostly engineers,” states a press release issued by IIT Bombay in this regard on Tuesday evening.

The institute emphasised that this revision in eligibility criteria is intended to improve the discipline and gender diversity of the cohort given the multi-disciplinary nature of management. “The diverse cohort will also help bring different perspectives to the classroom discussion and enrich the learning experience. The case method employed in management education and training also requires diversity in the classroom given the unstructured situations managers are required to deal with as there are no unique solutions or unique algorithms to solve the problems unlike in Science and Engineering,” added the release.

The institute has emphasised that the revised eligibility criteria is in line with the eligibility criteria for admission to MBA programmes offered by other IITs and IIMs.

The SJMSOM hopes to attract a more diverse pool of candidates to select from with the revised eligibility criteria which is also a result of “continuous and constant feedback from recruiters visiting SJMSOM,” according to the institute.  

The press release issued by IIT Bombay states, “The recruiting companies have also been facing pressures to improve gender (and discipline) diversity while hiring and planning their human resources and hence many management institutions have been employing different means to improve gender and discipline diversity while admitting students to their management programmes.”

Revised eligibility criteria:

1. Bachelor degree with at least 60% marks (55% in case of candidates belonging to SC/ST/PWD category) or a minimum CPI of 6.5 (6 in case of candidates belonging to SC/ST/PWD category) out of 10 from institutions/universities incorporated by an act of parliament or state legislature in India or other institutions declared to be deemed as University under Section 3 of the UGC Act, 1956, or possess an equivalent qualification recognized by the Ministry of Education, Government of India.

2. Candidates in final year of the degree and those awaiting results can also apply. The applicant should have secured an aggregate of 60% marks (55% in case of candidates belonging to SC/ST/PWD category) or equivalent till the latest exam that has been completed and whose scores are available. The admission will be subject to candidate fulfilling the eligibility criteria.

3. The candidate should have a valid CAT score.