Essay writing will replace group discussions (GD) during admissions to IIM Bangalore this year. According to sources at IIM Bangalore, “Yes, scrapping GD in favor of essays has been approved.” Candidates will have to write an essay in 30 minutes on any topic related to the current political, economic and business scenario or on topics such as sports and those that require more creative thinking. IIM B has not disclosed any conclusive reasons behind this decision. Note that IIM Ahmedabad had also eliminated the GD from its admission process in 2007. Update: The essays will be evaluated on the basis of their ‘content’ and ’style’.

In this roundup:

• IIM C Fellow Student receives award for Outstanding Doctoral Research
• XLRI welcomes S Vijayaraghavan, Chief Advisor (investments) to Nitish Kumar, on campus
• P D Rai, Member of Parliament (Sikkim) visits IIM, Shillong
• LIBA in association with FICCI holds fourth edition of Beacon 2010
• Subroto Bagchi, Mindtree Ltd, visits XIMB

In this roundup:

• IIM Kozhikode organises Calicut Mini Marathon 2010
• Ocumen 2010 organised by IIM Lucknow
• Kapil Sibal, Honourable Union Minister, HRD Ministry visits IIM Kozhikode
• Siddharth Roy Kapur, CEO, UTV Motion Pictures interacts with students of JBIMS
• A plethora of business leaders speak at IIM Lucknow’s Manfest 2010

As many as 56 companies picked up interns from the Shailesh J Mehta School of Management, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in the summer placements for the class of 2011. The institute claimed to have secured the internships for each of the 98 students in the batch in early October 2009 itself.

Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, NMIMS, Mumbai has successfully completed its online entrance examination, NMAT-2010 second day in a row, claimed the institute today. The test is being conducted at 51 centres in 19 cities across India by Pearson VUE testing agency. According to a Press statement issued by the NMAT Admission Committee on January 31, 2010 (day 2) of the test, “Over 5,500 candidates had tested successfully for the first ever Computer-Based Test for admission to the management programs of NMIMS nationally till the end of the second session on day 2.”

One of the criterion to be eligible for taking the test in the second phase of CAT, according to the CAT-IIM website states: ‘Those who could not take the test due to planned or unplanned closure of their test lab and were not rescheduled later in the first phase. (This does not include voluntary no-shows.)’. Looks like it wasn’t an important one after all. Ankit Arora, an employee in the sales division at PaGaLGuY.com was able to reschedule his CAT test after he voluntarily did not take it in the first phase.