The volume of total applications to Indian B-schools was down by 2.9 per cent, according to the GMAC survey. A similar downward trend was recorded as the total applications to graduate business schools across the world dipped this year from their pandemic highs, slipping 3.4 per cent year-on-year.

This comes after application volumes increased 2.4 per cent year-on-year in 2020 amid the start of the pandemic and sustained that level of demand in 2021, when schools reported a 0.4 percent year-on -year increase. The survey studied responses from 264 B-schools across 57 countries.

Muted sentiment

“Similar to China, the pandemic boom in applications did not come in 2020 for India. But instead came one year later in 2021, when 69 percent of programmes reported total application growth compared with the year prior. Now in 2022, coming off that hot year, application volumes moderated somewhat as 56 percent of programmes reported total application volume declines,” stated the report.

Eighty percent of full-time two-year MBA programmes in the US, a top choice for a majority of Indian students, reported increases in international applications this year. International applications were up at a particularly high proportion of specialised programmes such as Master of Supply Chain Management (93 per cent), Master in Marketing (76 per cent), and Master of Data Analytics (61 per cent).