New Delhi, Oct. 28: Indian Institute of Management bosses will meet here on Wednesday to discuss a government proposal to hold a common interview that will spare admission seekers a lot of travel.

An IIM teacher, however, said the B-schools were unlikely to accept the proposal, which they had once rejected earlier too.

On Wednesday, IIM chairpersons and directors will be asked if the B-schools could possibly hold the “group discussion and personal interview” (GDPI) stage of the selection process together at one place.

Nowadays, after clearing the Common Admission Test (CAT), students apply for the GDPI separately to each IIM of their choice, and travel from city to city to appear in them. Each institute follows a different set of criteria to select students.

“This system of multiple interviews is a source of hardship for the students,” a human resource development ministry official said.

“The meeting of the directors and chairpersons with the minister will discuss this and explore the possibility of holding a common GDPI.”

Under the proposal, the interview board will have representatives from each of the 13 IIMs. Each member will question the students and select those they prefer.

Himanshu Rai, the 2010 CAT convener and IIM Lucknow teacher, said the idea was “theoretically possible” but doubted that it would be accepted.

“Assuming that the IIMs will agree to something that is universal is unlikely. This is because the institutes’ preferences vary from one another,” he said.

Some of the B-schools give preference to a candidate’s work experience, he said, while some others attach more weight to a student’s performance in the school board or graduation exams. Some, again, look mostly at a student’s GDPI performance.

Rai claimed the students themselves prefer multiple interviews because that increases their chances of admission. If they do badly in one interview, they still have a chance in the next.

“I have spoken to at least 500 students. All of them have supported multiple interviews. It will be unfair to deny admission to a student in any of the IIMs on the basis of just one interview,” Rai said.

Some students who failed to secure IIM admission despite doing well in last year’s CAT told The Telegraph the government should ask the institutes to revamp their selection methods.

Vipul Chawla, now an MBA student with XLRI in Jamshedpur, had secured 99.47 percentile in CAT last year. He did not receive an interview call from any of the IIMs of his choice because most of the institutes gave more weight to candidates’ performances in their Class X, XII and graduation exams. Some preferred non-engineers.

“The IIMs give high weightage to students’ performances in their previous exams, but the assessment systems vary between school boards and universities,” Chawla said.

“There is no way to normalise the marks awarded by the different boards and universities. Giving more weightage to students from non-engineering backgrounds too is unfair.”

Chawla felt that a candidate’s performance in CAT and GDPI should hold the key to admission. Dipesh Kaien, a student with MDI Gurgaon, agreed. Kaien had secured 99.27 percentile but he too never received an interview call from any IIM.

“If the IIMs give high weightage to board exam marks, where is the necessity to hold CAT and GDPI? I have challenged the IIMs’ admission procedure in Delhi High Court,” he said.

The 13 IIMs together offer about 5,000 seats in their postgraduate programme.