Harvard Business School offers one of the top MBA programs in the United States. The Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad is the top business school in India and offers a post-graduate program in management, which leads to the PGDM. The MBA program at Harvard and the PGDM program at Ahmedabad are both two-year programs, with the first year covering the required core courses and the second year covering electives and specializations.
Students enroll in 10 core courses at Harvard Business School in the first year. IIMA requires completion of 33 different core courses in the first year. The core subjects of finance, financial reporting and control, leadership and organization behavior, marketing, technology and operations management are common to both schools. There is also some overlap in the business, government and international economic courses as well as leadership and corporate accountability. However, only Harvard requires that all MBA students take a course in entrepreneurial management. In addition, the strategy course at Harvard Business school is only a slight match with the economic environment and policy course at IIMA. Courses that IIMA require and Harvard does not are written analysis and communication, research methods, micro- and macro economics, business research methods and the socio-cultural environment of business.
Both Harvard Business School and IIMA offer electives in the areas of finance, accounting and management, entrepreneurial management, marketing and organizational behavior. Harvard offers additional specializations of general management; business, government and the international economy; negotiation, organization and markets; strategy; and technology and operations management. IIMA has electives in the areas of business policy; computer and information systems; management in agriculture; communication; economics; personnel and industrial relations; and production and quantitative methods. Although these are presented as different specializations, there is some overlap between them.
In the summer between the first and second years at IIMA, students enroll in a summer internship program that lasts between eight and 10 weeks. In the MBA program at Harvard, 50 percent of the learning experience takes place in the workplace under faculty supervision.
Both the MBA and the PGDM program require students to attend school full time. The academic year at Harvard Business School is two semesters long, for a total of 29 weeks of instruction. At IIMA, classes are spread over six slots, each of five or six weeks of duration.