TISS Mumbai Admission 2027: Cutoff, Fees & Placements

The Tata Institute of Social Sciences is a social-sciences university, not a business school. Its MBA-equivalent is the two-year MA in Human Resources Management & Labour Relations (HRM&LR), run by the Centre for Human Resources Management and Labour Relations in the School of Management and Labour Studies, and offered only at the Mumbai campus.

The programme was formerly the MA in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations, and grew out of a department established in 1965. It runs over four semesters and 88 credits, of which 18 are internship and 12 dissertation, with an intake of 60. TISS was declared a Deemed to be University in 1964 and became a Grant-in-Aid Institute under the Ministry of Education in 2023; it ranks 72nd in the NIRF 2025 University category and does not appear in the Management category.

For 2027-28, TISS admits to MA HRM&LR on the CAT 2026 score — not TISSNET, and not CUET-PG, which covers its other master’s programmes. There is no MAH MBA-CET or CAP route, and reservation follows Government of India rules: SC 15%, ST 7.5%, OBC non-creamy-layer 27% and EWS up to 10%.

Selection runs in two stages. Stage A shortlists candidates for an online assessment on CAT score weighted 97% plus 3% for gender diversity — 3 extra marks for female and transgender candidates. Stage B builds the final merit list on CAT score 70% and the online personal interview 30%. Eligibility is a bachelor’s or master’s degree of at least three or four years, or fifteen years of formal education, from a UGC-recognised university; final-year candidates apply provisionally.

The CAT-PG calendar for 2027-28 has not been published yet. The 2026-27 cycle is the guide to its shape:

Application fees in 2026-27 were ₹1,750 for General, ₹1,250 for OBC-NC and EWS, and ₹750 for SC/ST and GoI-PMS eligible candidates, for one programme, plus bank charges.

The latest published course fee for MA HRM&LR is ₹1,85,000 for the two years of the 2025-27 batch: ₹1,09,000 in year one and ₹76,000 in year two, including a refundable ₹10,000 caution deposit. Tuition itself is ₹16,000 a semester; most of the bill is funds and charges, front-loaded into semester one.

No general-category course fee for the 2026-28 batch has been published, and TISS reserves the right to revise fees, so do not assume the 2025-27 figure carries over. Hostel and dining are billed on top, and only if a hostel seat is allotted: the one published chart, for eligible SC/ST GoI-PMS students in 2026-27, puts them at ₹38,000 a semester — ₹18,000 hostel and electricity and a ₹20,000 dining-hall advance.

Withdrawal refunds follow a sliding scale, from 100% if you withdraw 15 days or more before the notified last date of admission to nil beyond 30 days after it, with a processing charge capped at ₹5,000. Eligible SC and ST candidates with family income under ₹2.5 lakh pay the basic fee chart and apply to their state for the Government of India Post-Matric Scholarship; TISS also offers Student Aid for financial need and has education-loan arrangements with nationalised banks.

TISS publishes minimum CAT percentile floors for the online-assessment shortlist, not a closing cutoff. Clearing the floor puts your application in the pool; the shortlist is then drawn top-down on the weighted score against 60 seats.

The 3% gender-diversity weightage applies at shortlisting only, not to the final merit list, and the interview carries 30% of the final merit, so a shortlisted candidate with a lower CAT percentile can displace a higher one. If your CAT sits near the floor, the interview is where the seat is won. The floors for 2027-28 have not been published yet.

The 2024-26 HRM&LR batch, placed in February 2026, earned a ₹28.69 lakh mean and a ₹28 lakh median CTC, with a ₹66 lakh highest.

Median and mean sit within ₹69,000 of each other, so the headline is not being carried by a few outliers. Aditya Birla Group made the most offers, followed by Deloitte, Accenture Strategy & Consulting, Citi, ITC and Reliance Industries; most graduates join in consulting, then BFSI/NBFC, conglomerates, FMCG/FMCD, manufacturing and IT/ITES.

Summer internships, batch of 2025-27: all 66 participating students were placed, by 30 companies, at a ₹3.50 lakh median and ₹3.47 lakh mean stipend for the two months, with a ₹5 lakh highest. Bajaj Auto made the most offers.

The two Mumbai campuses — the Main Campus and the Malti and Jal A.D. Naoroji Campus Annexe — are both in Deonar, in north-east Greater Mumbai. The Main Campus is opposite Deonar Bus Depot on V.N. Purav Marg, and the nearest suburban station is Govandi.

Hostel admission is restricted to full-time Master’s students and is not guaranteed. Students who ordinarily live in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region are not eligible, and out-of-town students with close relatives in Mumbai are not allotted a place either, so plan for private rent near Deonar or Govandi as the base case; TISS circulates a list of available rental flats each year. The dining hall serves vegetarian and non-vegetarian meals and is run by a committee with student representatives, and defaulting on dining-hall payments can cost both membership and hostel residence.

Against XLRI Jamshedpur, the split is the entrance exam: XLRI’s HRM admits on XAT, TISS on CAT. If you are sitting only one of the two tests, the choice is largely made for you.

Against MDI Gurgaon, whose PGDM-HRM is also a CAT-route HR programme, the axis is cost: TISS’s ₹1,85,000 course fee is a fraction of a private PGDM’s, and its 2024-26 median of ₹28 lakh sits in the same range. Against a general two-year MBA such as JBIMS or SPJIMR, the axis is specialisation: a general MBA keeps consulting, finance and marketing open, and HRM&LR does not. Choose TISS if you already know you want HR, not as a hedge.

Inside TISS, MA ODCL runs on the same CAT route from the same School but is self-financed and needs two years of full-time work experience — a different price and a different candidate.