At a broad level, we can classify the B-schools into the ones which do not reserve seats for any group and admit students purely based on merit, and the ones which follow a policy of reservation of seats for certain categories of applicants.

The reservation policy followed by the B-schools can be classified into the following categories:

• National level Govt B-schools (e.g., IIMs, IITs, NITIE, FMS, TISS, IIFT, IIFM) - They follow the following reservation policy
  • Other Backward Classes – Non-creamy (OBC-NC): 27%
  • Scheduled Castes (SC): 15%
  • Scheduled Tribes (ST): 7.5%
  • Differently Abled (DA): 5%
  • Economically Weaker Sections (EWS): 10%
• State level B-schools (where admissions are done by University or DTE authorities, e.g., OUCBM, All MH Colleges (MMS programme)) - The seats are reserved for home state students (domicile). The percentage of seats reserved varies from one state to another. For example, in AP, 100% of seats are reserved for AP domicile applicants, whereas in Maharashtra, 85% of seats are reserved. One should note here that there could be a provision for regional reservation under the home state reserved seats, e.g., 70% of seats out of 85% reserved in Maharashtra are meant for local university students. In addition to regional reservations, the state government norms pertaining to community-based reservations will be in place.
• Minority institutions (e.g., LIBA (Catholic Christians), Rizvi (Muslims)) - Usually, the minority-run institutions offer 50% of their seats to applicants hailing from the minority community. For example, LIBA reserves 50% of seats for Christians and Rizvi-Mumbai reserves 50% of seats for Muslim applicants.
• Private Universities - Some private B-schools, like the ones affiliated to Symbiosis International University, offer reservation to SC, ST, DA, and Kashmiri migrants.