An acquaintance of mine completed his PGDM from IMT Ghaziabad so hopefully, he would be able to answer your question accurately.

• In the case of PGDM full-time, you will be capable of choosing your own area of specialization, be it marketing, finance, or HR at the end of the first year.
• In the case of PGDM finance, your area has already has been chosen for you and will not be able to change it.
• Irrespective of the specializations, the first year is common for each and every student. PGDM students can choose their desired area of specialization at the end of the first year.

The college management may ask full-time students to choose their specialization area before their placements for summer internships which are usually 3-4 months of joining even though technically you can choose your major by the end of the first year. My acquaintance had to choose his major before his summer internship placements.

If you choose PGDM Full time, then you will be able to choose your specialization from:

• Marketing
• Finance
• Information Management and Analytics
• Operations Management
• Human Resources
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship

If you go for PGDM finance, you will have to learn the electives and core subjects of finance in your second year.

You should never consider a course on the basis of the placements they offer. Look at what interests you as that will be more fruitful in the future. Besides, you will notice that it is easier to learn something that interests you. This will also help you go beyond the basic course benchmarks.

With this interest, you will be able to build better skills, leading to hard work and subject expertise. In the long run, it leads to fame and in turn, work will come flooding in. You will get interesting work, a good package as well as job satisfaction and security.

You should look at how the specialization is going to help you achieve your goals. Each specialization will help you tackle a specific area in the field of management. There are six major specializations as far as IMT Ghaziabad is concerned:

• Marketing
• Finance
• Information Management and Analytics
• Human Resources
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship

If you are keen on a particular specialization, you should definitely take that up. It will definitely help you excel in your career. Job satisfaction and growth will only happen when you do something that you have a genuine interest in.

IMT Ghaziabad is one of the most popular colleges for MBA. To get admission here, you have to appear for MBA entrance exams like CAT, XAT, GMAT, and CMAT. On clearing those you can apply for IMT Ghaziabad and its various branches in Nagpur, Hyderabad, and Dubai. Further, for the selection, you need to go through a few stages which include Critical thinking, Group Exercise, and Personal Interview.

It consists of three simple stages as CT-GE-PI and Common Application form for its final selection process.

The Critical Thinking Test:

• After arrival and registration of the shortlisted candidates, there will be a thorough long Critical Thinking Test for the duration of 30 minutes.
• This will boil down on three parameters - critical thinking, written communication skills, and innovation & creativity.

Group Exercise:

• After the critical thinking test, the candidates will be divided into small groups for the Group Exercise.
• The group will be given a problem to solve or a task to perform, which they must do together while discussing among themselves.
• For instance, they might be asked to do a short case study, solve a puzzle, or solve a business problem.
• This will take approximately 30 minutes and will evaluate the candidate on four parameters – contribution of ideas, leadership potential, interpersonal skills and communication & attitude.

Personal Interview:

• Post the Group Exercise, the candidate will have a personal interview of approximately 15 minutes, during which he/she will be evaluated on four parameters: domain knowledge, communication skills, versatility (extra-curricular/general awareness), as well as values & maturity.
• Work Experience candidates will be additionally evaluated on the relevance of their work experience in relation to the PGDM program.

The final merit of the candidate will be a cumulative weighted average which has the Academic Scores, Work Experience, and the scores obtained during the CT-GE-PI process.

Both merit and campus score cut-offs will be the foundation of selection for IMT campuses, i.e. Ghaziabad, Nagpur, Hyderabad, and Dubai.

IMT Ghaziabad offers group exercise topics which basically require team approach and ability to complete a particular exercise within the time period as mentioned. However, it is not GD where an individual is seen to dominate over the other members of the team, but it is all about team endeavor and about people acquiring equal chance to speak. 

You should try maintaining a healthy environment throughout the discussion, and come to the completion of every single topic as assigned with a good source of effort.

The group will likewise be provided with a personalised topic or a task to perform within the allocated time. Alongside, after the topic is being assigned, they are expected to run discussions among their group members. For instance, the group members might be asked to perform a brief case study, or solve a specific problem, or tackle a circumstance risen in some business areas. 

Having said that, it can particularly range from anything and is supposed to take 30 minutes which later will estimate the candidate’s performance based on four distributive parameters, namely, contribution of ideas, leadership potential, interpersonal skills and communication and attitude.

. You are only required to enjoy and consume the procedure as much as you can, because, becoming totally clueless on site can be one point which might affect your presence. You can however try to become more engaging and contributive to the ideas, in spite of having little knowledge of the topic itself.