Initial accreditation

Become an AACSB educational member. If the entity is a single business unit rather than the institution, get the unit application approved first. Submit the eligibility application through myAccreditation, attend the mandatory EA workshop, and wait for the Eligibility Review Committee. On acceptance, a mentor and accreditation manager are assigned. The mentor helps build an initial self-evaluation report. IAC can accept the iSER and invite a final SER, send the school into an implementation phase with annual progress reports, or demand a rewrite. Only then does a peer-review team visit. Recommendations are accreditation, deferral, or denial, concurred by IAC and ratified by the board.

Eligibility is a feasibility screen, not a dress rehearsal of Standard 3. Schools that cannot see a path to the faculty and AoL tables inside the time cap should be told so by the mentor. Paying the EA fee does not entitle anyone to a visit.

Example: a school is accepted to eligibility in year 1, spends three years hiring SA faculty and building AoL, gets iSER acceptance with an implementation phase, files two progress reports, then a SER and visit in year 5. That is a normal clock. A school that files SER in month 18 with empty Table 3-1 is buying a denial.

CIR is for schools that already hold AACSB. It is consultative, on a six-year cycle (from visits on 1 July 2026). Initial is a standards-alignment climb with a mentor. EQUIS initial is a different body’s process: EFMD membership, ten-year operating history, 25 FTE core faculty, typically two to three years from eligibility. Do not import EQUIS timelines into an AACSB project plan.

Process	Who it is for	Distinctive artifact
AACSB initial	Never-accredited (or lapsed) entity	iSER then SER, mentor, IAC
AACSB CIR	Already accredited	CIR application at mid-cycle, CIR report, CIRC
EQUIS initial	EFMD member school meeting EQUIS eligibility	Datasheet, EQUIS peer review, Accreditation Board

AACSB’s handbook says the average is four to five years and it can take up to seven. Eligibility after 17 February 2025 goes through ERC, which changes the front-end calendar. Budget time for hiring and AoL, not just for writing. A two-year plan is usually fantasy unless the school is already operating as if it were accredited.

The iSER is the first serious gap analysis and plan, written with the mentor. The final SER is the document the peer-review team reads before the visit, after IAC has seen enough progress. IAC may keep you in implementation with annual reports between the two. Do not relabel a draft iSER as a SER to force a visit date.

The first award puts the school into the CIR cycle. Effective with visits from 1 July 2026, CIR is six years, not five. The next visit date is assigned; it is not a school preference. Maintenance is CIR, historically also called maintenance of accreditation.