A Dean's Dilemma: Selection of Students for the MBA Program Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

Jain University’s Business School’s Dean, Easwaran lyer, needed to figure out some suitable parameters for the selection of students who were ideal for the Master of Business Administration (MBA) program. The University had around 400 seats for the MBA program and every year it received a lot of applications from all over the India. Over the years, it had been increasing the number of applications. In order to attract the right set of students to the MBA program, placement performance was very crucial in India. However, over 180 Business Schools were closed down in 2012 in different cities of the country, including Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Mumbai, Dehradun, Kolkata, and Lucknow, which reflected various causes for their closure such as lack of expertise by the institute in promoting their students to play a major role in the field.

The Dean himself decided to participate in the screening process of the candidate's application that either to be selected or rejected, along with his admission committee team from the start of the admission season that stretched to around 4 months from April to July. However, the management had no criteria of putting fine on the selection of non-placeable student, but it would ultimately affect the ranking of Jain University. The higher the number of wrong selections by the committee would cause the reduction in the average salary. Along with this, there was also a probability of rejecting a potential candidate. The challenge for Easwaran lyer was not only to increase the students in the batch, but also to ensure the admission of ideal students. He believed that to combat this challenge, it required more analytical reasoning along with incorporating various techniques.