IMT Ghaziabad vs Nagpur vs Hyderabad: Fees, Exams and Fit (2026)

Three campuses, one brand, one common application — and a Rs 7,00,000 spread between the dearest and the cheapest published total. The IMT group is the cleanest multi-campus comparison in Indian management education right now because every campus has now published its numbers where we could read them: Ghaziabad’s official fee PDF (verified 30 August 2026), and the Nagpur and Hyderabad admissions pages opened on 6 September 2026.

The answer first: the verified totals

Campus	Published total	What it bundles	Exams	Cycle
IMT Ghaziabad	Rs 23,00,000	Tuition, academic charges, admission fee, alumni membership; caution money refundable	CAT, XAT, GMAT	2026-28
IMT Nagpur	Rs 16,00,000	Hostel, mess, books and admission fee included	CAT, XAT, CMAT, GMAT	2027-29
IMT Hyderabad	Rs 16,00,000	Accommodation and mess included	CAT, XAT, GMAT	2027-29

Ghaziabad’s breakup is public to the rupee: year one Rs 13,00,000 (admission fee Rs 50,000, tuition Rs 12,27,000, alumni membership Rs 8,000, caution money Rs 15,000 refundable), year two Rs 10,00,000. Nagpur and Hyderabad answer the “and then what?” question inside the headline number itself — both sixteen-lakh totals already carry living costs, which is precisely the line families usually discover after the offer letter.

The exam menu decides your campus order

One common application (Rs 3,500) carries preferences across the group, but the campuses do not read the same scores. Nagpur alone takes CMAT — for a CMAT scorer, it is the only IMT door, accepting CAT 2026, XAT 2027, CMAT 2027 or GMAT into its 360-seat matrix (240 core, 60 Marketing, 60 Financial Management). Ghaziabad and Hyderabad run CAT, XAT and GMAT only. All three then select physically: Ghaziabad’s offline Critical Thinking and Personal Interview, Nagpur’s offline PI with January 2027 logistics, Hyderabad’s offline interview from the first week of February 2027.

The scholarship difference is bigger than the fee difference

Nagpur publishes what each scholarship does to the payable total, which no other campus does as plainly: Rs 12,94,600 for every admitted woman (Smt Leela Nath Memorial, 20% off academic fee), Rs 9,89,200 at a 90-percentile-plus CAT/XAT or 700/645-plus GMAT (40% off), and Rs 2,89,000 under the AICTE Tuition Fee Waiver for up to 5% of intake. Hyderabad prints the same three schemes without payable totals. Ghaziabad’s merit scholarships sit on its own pages. Run your own score through all three grids before assuming the flagship is the expensive option — for a 90-plus scorer, Nagpur’s payable total is less than half of Ghaziabad’s published fee.

What the quota question gets, campus by campus

Nagpur prints it in one sentence: “There is no management quota. Selection is based purely on merit.” Ghaziabad’s published rules run the same merit-only line, and Hyderabad’s page contains a single entrance-plus-interview route at a single fee. Whichever campus an agent claims to “manage”, the claim contradicts that campus’s own published page.

Who should choose which

• Choose Ghaziabad if the draw is the group’s flagship ecosystem beside Delhi, on CAT/XAT/GMAT, at the published Rs 23 lakh — and the report-backed recruiter depth is worth the premium to you.
• Choose Nagpur if you hold CMAT, if the scholarship arithmetic fits your score or your daughter’s admission, or if Rs 16 lakh all-in — possibly far less — beats a postcode.
• Choose Hyderabad if you want the all-in Rs 16 lakh bundle in an IT-and-pharma hiring market, on CAT/XAT/GMAT, with the same group scholarship names attached.

When the offers arrive, compare them line by line with the offer-comparison worksheet — and if a campus quote ever differs from its own published page, believe the page.