ISB Hyderabad Admission 2027: Cutoff, Fees & Placements

The Indian School of Business (ISB) is a private, autonomous business school running two campuses: Gachibowli in Hyderabad, and Knowledge City, Sector 81, SAS Nagar, Mohali (ISB official campuses page). Its own milestones record dates the ISB Board to 1996, the Hyderabad foundation stone to 1999, the first PGP cohort to 2001, and the Mohali campus starting the PGP in 2012 (ISB official History and Milestones page).

The flagship is the Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP): twelve months, full-time, residential, run identically at both campuses (ISB official PGP page). ISB also runs PGP YL for early-career candidates, PGP PRO for working professionals, PGP MAX for senior executives, PGP MFAB for family business, and doctoral routes (FPM, EFPM).

The PGP is not a degree. ISB's PGP page describes it as comparable to an MBA but not a degree programme, and the official PGP FAQ states it is neither a degree nor a diploma, adding that ISB has not sought UGC or AICTE recognition because it awards neither. Its standing rests on international accreditation instead: AACSB in 2011, EQUIS in 2017 with re-accreditation in 2025, and AMBA in 2020 (ISB official History and Milestones page).

ISB appears nowhere among the 100 institutes listed in the NIRF 2025 Management ranking (nirfindia.org). ISB's PGP page cites the Financial Times Global MBA Ranking 2026 placing it 12th globally and 1st in India.

There is no CAT route to ISB and no state counselling route. Admission runs entirely through ISB's own application. The official PGP eligibility page sets three requirements: a bachelor's degree or equivalent from a recognised institution, with three-year degrees accepted; a valid GMAT or GRE score; and a minimum of 24 months of full-time work experience before enrolment.

Test rules are strict. ISB accepts the GMAT (10th Edition or Focus Edition) and the GRE with no stated preference, but only test-centre scores; online and at-home versions have not been accepted since April 2025, per the official PGP FAQ. Scores must fall within five years of the deadline and be sent directly by the testing agency. CAT is accepted only for the separate PGP YL programme.

The official eligibility page describes seven stages: application submission, verification of about twenty days, an interview shortlist from a holistic profile review, a roughly thirty-minute interview held virtually or in person, admissions committee review, the decision, and a separate scholarship decision with its own interviews. No group discussion or written ability test stage is published, and ISB does not publish a numerical weightage split across score, work experience and interview.

Applications run in three rounds. For the Class of 2028 the published deadlines are 20 September 2026, 6 December 2026 and 17 January 2027, after which applications are not accepted (ISB official PGP application deadlines page). One application per admission year. ISB states it operates no reservations, quotas or management quota (ISB official PGP FAQ).

In one line: ISB publishes a single headline fee of Rs 34,48,000 plus GST for AY2027-28 on a shared-accommodation, single-instalment basis, and no component-wise break-up.

The published amount covers admission, commitment and tuition fees, and the same page calls the figure indicative and subject to change. Because the PGP runs twelve months, this is the programme total, not a per-year charge.

On aid, the official PGP fee and scholarships page states that merit-based tuition waivers run from 25 to 100 per cent and are considered automatically for all applicants; that need-based aid requires annual family income below Rs 18 lakh plus a separate essay; and that roughly 25 per cent of PGP students receive some financial support. Named lending partners include Axis Bank, Bank of Baroda, Canara Bank, Central Bank of India and Credila Financial Services. Rates move; read the current rate off the sanction letter, not a website.

For context, the published PGP YL fee is Rs 25,60,000 plus GST (AY2027-29, ISB official PGP YL fees page) and PGP PRO is Rs 33,69,559 plus GST (AY2027-28, ISB official PGP PRO fee page).

There is no cutoff at ISB in the sense a CAT or MHT CET candidate means the word. The official PGP FAQ states there is no minimum GMAT or GRE score required to apply, and the eligibility page repeats it. No qualifying percentile is published, and no category-wise or round-wise cutoff table exists, because there is no external counselling authority. ISB is the admitting body; its committee is the filter.

In one line: the only score information ISB publishes is the spread of its current class, not a bar you must clear.

Read that range as a distribution, not a threshold. The candidate at the bottom was admitted because a work record, progression and recommendations carried the file. Equally, a score near the top guarantees nothing, since the shortlist stage is a holistic profile review rather than a score sort.

ISB does not publish applications received, interviews called or offers made per round, so nobody can honestly quote you an ISB acceptance rate by round. The official class profile page presents its data as images, so average work experience and cohort demographics are not reproduced here; read those charts yourself.

In one line: ISB publishes an average of Rs 37.29 lakh per annum for the PGP Class of 2026 and a highest offer of Rs 1.56 crore, but no median, the number that would tell you what a typical graduate earns.

All figures above: ISB official press release on the 25th PGP cohort, 6 April 2026.

The missing median matters more than it looks. Average and median separate whenever a few very large offers sit in the same pool, and a Rs 1.56 crore offer in an 808-person cohort is that shape. Treating Rs 37.29 lakh as what a graduate earns overstates the typical outcome by an amount nobody outside ISB can quantify, and this page will not estimate it.

Also unpublished: the placement rate, the recruiter count, and salary split by sector or function. ISB does state that 25 first-time recruiters joined campus placements and that average CTC rose about 156 per cent against the cohort's average pre-ISB CTC. The usual independent cross-check, a NIRF median salary submission, does not exist: ISB is absent from the NIRF 2025 Management ranking.

The PGP is fully residential. The official PGP FAQ states that living on campus is compulsory for every student, so accommodation sits inside the programme fee rather than a separate hostel bill. The published AY2027-28 figure of Rs 34,48,000 plus GST is quoted on a shared-accommodation basis (ISB official PGP Fee and Financing page).

In one line: shared accommodation is bundled into the fee, and every other living cost is either unpublished or yours to budget.

Studio apartments exist. The official PGP FAQ notes preference goes to married couples and that a specific allocation cannot be guaranteed. If you plan to bring a spouse, settle it with admissions before you accept an offer.

The Hyderabad campus at Gachibowli has a Learning Resource Centre, dining areas, a gym and indoor sports facilities, an amphitheatre, a lake and play areas, faculty housing and a day-care centre (ISB official campuses page). Campus acreage is not stated there, so it is left out rather than guessed. Mohali runs the same PGP and lists a library and Learning Resource Centre, gym, swimming pool, cafeteria and student lounge. Campus allocation is not set out in the official PGP FAQ, so ask admissions before you assume Hyderabad.

Do not choose ISB if you need a recognised degree. The PGP is neither a degree nor a diploma, and ISB has not sought UGC or AICTE recognition. That closes doors: most central and state government posts, many public-sector roles, UGC-NET eligibility, and doctoral admission anywhere that demands a recognised master's degree. If any of those sit in your ten-year plan, an IIM or an AICTE-approved PGDM is the safer instrument.

Do not apply with under 24 months of full-time work experience at enrolment: you are not eligible, and PGP YL exists for that stage.

Think hard if the fee must come from a loan you will service alone. The honest arithmetic is your EMI against a realistic post-programme salary, and the only anchor ISB publishes is an average pulled upward by outliers. Do not build on the highest offer, and do not treat the average as a floor.

Reconsider if you are switching both industry and function with no adjacent exposure. A twelve-month programme has no summer internship, so no low-risk trial run and no second recruiting season to recover in. Two-year programmes give you both.

Reconsider if your target sector does not recruit in volume at ISB, or hires mainly through non-campus routes. And do not apply expecting a management-quota or donation fallback. ISB states it runs no quotas or reservations: either the file is competitive or it is not.

Compare on decision axes, not rank tables: these are not the same product.

Against IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore and IIM Calcutta, the axis is recognition. Their one-year programmes for experienced candidates award a degree under the IIM Act; ISB's PGP does not. If a recognised qualification carries weight in your sector, that difference outranks any ranking table. They also admit through their own tests rather than the GMAT or GRE, so the preparation path differs.

Against the two-year flagship programmes at the older IIMs, the axis is structure and the cost of time. Two years buys a summer internship, a second recruiting cycle and a younger peer group; one year buys twelve fewer months out of the workforce. Mid-career and confident about direction, the shorter programme is usually cheaper once foregone salary is counted; unsure, and the internship is worth more than it looks.

Against XLRI Jamshedpur, the axis is functional depth, particularly in human resources, which is XLRI's identity rather than one elective track.

Against SPJIMR Mumbai, the axis is admission philosophy and cohort profile, since SPJIMR runs its own multi-stage process and a different applicant mix.

Against Great Lakes Chennai, the axis is fee-to-outcome: another one-year programme for experienced candidates at a materially lower published fee, so the question is what the ISB premium buys in your sector. Verify every peer figure on that institute's own pages.