Are experienced graduates preferred over fresh graduates for top B-School admissions?

Yes, a majority of the companies look for experienced students rather than a fresher. The major reason is that they can use students with experience in a different way as compared to a fresher. A fresher won't be able to adjust with a job profile easily. Little time is required for them to get on the track. Experience of 1-2 years helps a lot for having high a salary package with a luxury life. Indian companies especially MNCs like L&T, Mc Donald, Tata, Aditya Birla, JK, Apollo all hire experienced graduates. I suggest that you take up a job before joining MBA /PGDM. The companies which come for placements in the college definitely look for people with a minimum 1-year experience as a plus point for them to join the firm. The size or quality of a company never matters, but the job description matters a lot. Go for a job and then join MBA. In order to increase the brand value of the college, they will go for experienced students.

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Experienced candidates are said to have inherent capabilities and are strongly favored due to their corporate experience and knowhow of various sectors. They demonstrate sense of maturity which sometimes is missing among a fresher. However, a fresher do hold an edge because of his/her fresh perspective to complex problems and hunger for learning which basically offsets the candidates with work experience. Hence, a fresher with great academics, decent technical knowledge, hunger and passion for management roles, and excellent communication as well as people management skills shall hold an edge over candidates with work experience. So, in my opinion both shall have equal weightage if they meet above expectations and parameters used for judging. For placements, the student who performs best shall be awarded the fruit for his hard work irrespective of his experience and age.

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We can say that. Experienced graduates can contribute better in class discussions, and can experiment with other functional areas during the summer internship which is a risk a fresher can't afford. They are also better at handling people. They tend to have a better idea of what they want and hence have stronger work habits. The most important advantage that freshers have is an open mind. They have new opinions and a fresh viewpoint which is not inclined towards any distinct field or sector. They are not constrained by rules and hence can think and do things which experienced people might not. This also makes them have a higher risk taking capacity. People with various levels of work-experience go for an MBA. It is not unusual to find people having 1 year to 10 or more years of experience in the same batch. It is totally the choice of the college. But if you want to pursue MBA, it is not recommended to find a job first. It is just simply that if you are already working and want to do MBA, then go for it.

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Yes, experienced graduates have a better weightage, some of the colleges make it mandatory to have work experience. But this is not true for all colleges. Although experience counts but your ability and how you performed in the interview and the kind of background you are having in education matters to get the admission. However, there are many colleges which invite freshers to join the course. You might want to check the eligibility requirement of each college to understand better. There is a difference in criteria depending on the model of the institute as some are solely focused on the experienced candidates, but majority are not. Some institutes such as IBS look for only experienced candidates. This is a rare case scenario. Most of the business schools take in freshers and experienced candidates at the same level, only taking into consideration the skills of the candidates. If you check the websites of the IIM, they follow a scoring system which gives weightage to each attribute such as the CAT score, experience and so on.

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A fresher won't be able to adjust with a job profile easily. Little time is required for them to get on the track. Experience of 1-2 years helps a lot for having high a salary package with a luxury life. Indian companies especially MNCs like L&T, Mc Donald, Tata, Aditya Birla, JK, Apollo all hire experienced graduates. I suggest that you take up a job before joining MBA /PGDM. The companies which come for placements in the college definitely look for people with a minimum 1-year experience as a plus point for them to join the firm. The size or quality of a company never matters, but the job description matters a lot. Go for a job and then join MBA. In order to increase the brand value of the college, they will go for experienced students.

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Hi, Work experience is always an added advantage when one is trying to learn the management subjects. I repeat it's an added advantage not a must-have. Hence, most of the B-Schools have added weightage to applicants with prior work experience. However, most B-Schools prefer to have a good mix of freshers and work-ex people. This is due to two reasons. One, peer to peer learning. It is an important part of a learning process at management institutes. People with diverse work experience along with people with fresh minds make up a strong group and it helps a lot in the learning process. Second, many marketing companies coming to campus prefer to hire freshers. (There are also some companies who insist on hiring experienced candidates only) So, to sum it all, It is an added advantage to you if you have a prior work experience while joining a B-School but it is not absolutely required!

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Hi, In most cases, work experience is not mandatory. But, most of the top business institutes give preference to work experience and some of them make it mandatory. However, there are many colleges which invites freshers to join the course. You might want to check the eligibility requirement of each college to understand better. There is a difference in criteria depending on the model of the institute, as some are solely focused on experienced candidates, but majority are not. Some institutes, such as IBS look for only experienced candidates. This is a rare case scenario. Most of the business schools take in freshers and experienced candidates at the same level, only taking into consideration the skills of the candidates. If you check the websites of the IIM institutes, they follow a scoring system which give weightage to each attribute such as the CAT score, experience and so on.

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Yes, of course. Any B-school would want an experienced student having some corporate knowledge apart from the one who doesn’t have any. But, it does not mean, that they give high percentage importance to work experience factor. If you apply for a PGDM program of a particular college, they would be having a percentage distribution of various aspects like GD, PI, work experience, past academic record, etc. Work experience people have some advantage, as they had a prior experience of working in corporate and also have some knowledge in that particular field. How much importance each B-School gives to work experience may vary. Some may give more weightage, to that aspect others may give that factor a less importance. So, it is up to the college, that how they want to shortlist the students.

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well that thing does matter and even each and every MBA school have the Summer Internship program so you don't have to worry about the experience at the end it all depends on you that how you perform in final interview

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Not necessarily, there are two sides to this coin as well. Some institutes believe that having some work experience means knowing about the industry to some extent which will help to understand and imagine how the concepts taught in class can be implemented in real life. While some believe that freshers are more active and their thoughts can be easily moulded. In general more students studying in IIMs have some work experience. Mostly percent of people with work experience is greater than freshers in all IIMs. But this ratio varies from college to college. For example, IIM Bangalore prefers people with work experience over freshers. Around 30 percent of total batch consists of freshers. While in other IIMs the percent of freshers can vary between 35-50 (approx.) in general. It depends upon you when you want to apply for CAT.

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