IIFT Kolkata Ph.D. Courses & Fees 2026

IIFT Kolkata offers PhD across two specialisations, namely Management and Economics. Both these specialisations along with their eligibility requirements are tabulated below:

Indian Institute for Foreign Trade is a pioneer institute in the country to study Foreign Trade. There are four IIFTs in the world, of which three are situated in India (Delhi, Kolkata and Kakinada), and one is in Tanzania. But in those four, two of the most popular ones include IIFT Delhi and IIFT Kolkata. Talking about the difficulty level of the exam, the Quantitative Aptitude section of IIFT is comparatively tough if compared with CAT (this section is moderately tough in CAT). Hence, for some candidates, IIFT comes across as a tougher exam. Additionally, the IIFT entrance exam is inclusive of a General Knowledge section which is not part of the CAT exam. Since CAT is considered the top-notch level exam for MBA admission in India, candidates can read more about CAT vs IIFT here.

 Admission to PhD at IIFT Kolkata is a two-stage process. Both of these are mentioned below:

• Stage I: All the eligible candidates are called for an MCQ-based written entrance test comprising of basic statistics, logical reasoning, data interpretation, basic mathematics (up to Class 12) and verbal ability

• Stage II: Candidates who clear the stage I (the written entrance test) will be called for the Personal Interview (PI)

Qualified candidates of UGC NET-JRF are exempted from the Written Entrance Examination and are called for interviews on the basis of their scores in

UGC NET-JRF exam. A separate list is released for the candidates shortlisted via this admission process

The admission for the IIFT Kolkata is done based on the IIFT entrance test conducted by the NTA during December. The test involves the group discussions, writing skills assessment and personal interview.

The students must be with an aggregation of about 50 percentage in the under graduation. The exam is as tough as the CAT.