Applications from domestic students for graduate business programs in the US increased by 29% in 2020 despite the Covid-19 pandemic. Admission to US B-schools is likely to get more competitive especially for students for India not only this year but in 2022 as well.
President and CEO of the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), Sangeet Chowfla, said that more students applied to US B-schools with the reduction in opportunity cost of leaving a job and joining a business school. This is known as classic counter-cyclic growth and both enrolment and applications have grown at the international level, he added.
B-schools in the US had been seeing a decline in domestic applications in previous years.
Mr Chowfla said that India has seen a V-shape recovery in applications for NMAT and GMAT despite the drop in the number of Indians applying for business programmes.
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There is also a pent-up demand that will lead to US B-schools getting more competitive for Indian students. A number of students who wanted to study in the past few years had to defer their admissions either due to the strict immigration policies introduced by the Trump administration or due to the global pandemic in 2020.
Students who were planning on applying for MBA programmes between December and January 2021 would now be joining in September this year or in 2022, as they are more likely to prefer in-person classes to online learning, explained Mr Chowfla.
Foreign students applying to US B-schools increased to 20%, although a lot of them got deferred.
Despite the pandemic, graduate management programmes in the US have managed to retain its popularity.
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In India too, although domestic applications have declined, applications from overseas students held up well.
Mr Chowfla went on to explain that international students are more likely to eat at campuses, stay in dorms, which are very crucial to the economics of an institution.
Cost of operating schools due to Covid-19 restrictions have gone up all over the world, including the US.
Stay tuned for the latest news and updates on higher education in the US.
