Like a florist, handpicking the best flowers, orchids, leaves, trinkets to go into making a beautiful bouquet, the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid has selected their bouquet of students for the eighth batch to the ISB.

Admissions spent the last year verifying, processing, evaluating, short-listing, interviewing and having storms of decision-making sessions to get students from a highly competent applicant pool.

Admissions team travelled all over India for information sessions which were conducted at Ahmadabad, Bangalore, Baroda, Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Chennai, New Delhi, Ernakulum, Goa, Gurgoan, Guwahati, Indore, Jaipur, Kolkatta, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Mumbai, Mysore, Noida, Pune, Surat and Vizag. Seeding activities were done in colleges at Chennai, Hyderabad, Goa and New Delhi. Counselling sessions at the ISB and campus visits have increased by leaps and bounds.

The school saw a very healthy increase in applications over the last year. 440 students have joined the class of 2009; certainly a long way from the 128 students in the first class of 2002. All are geared up to admit 560 students for the class of 2010. Construction of Student Village 4 has commenced to accommodate the students for the next academic year.

“Diversity with Excellence” – Admissions has put together a peer group as diverse as it could get – valiant armed forces personnel, lifesavers from healthcare, technically sound engineers, smooth and savvy insurance and marketing personnel’s, number crunching finance professionals, accountants and bankers, much travelled mercantile marines, Indian government servants, socially conscious NGO workers, sportsmen of international repute etc.

The sports page in newspapers is the most unlikely page to find articles referring to the ISB. This happened as the hot topic of discussion across sports pages and channels when news about India’s national hockey captain quit sports to study management at the ISB!!!

With the FT top 20 ranking, Admissions is anticipating the pleasure and pressure of processing a huge number of applications for the next year. But, for now, its time to welcome!!!