IIMs tweak screening and admission process, witness more diversity in terms of gender, backgrounds

The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have changed their policies regarding the screening process of applicants, and these tweaks have resulted in more diverse classrooms. As per a report published on examswatch.com, the 2017-19 batch at the top three IIMs — Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta — feature more diverse classrooms with better gender discipline and are spread out over more streams. The ExamsWatch article attributed this to many factors like recruitment of female candidates, attention to “holistic leadership potential” among those interviewed, and encouragement to discipline diversity in those called for interviews. [caption id=“attachment_2312820” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  IIM Ahmedabad. Courtesy: iima.ac.in[/caption] For instance, with 145 women, IIM Calcutta posted its highest ever proportion of girl students. In all, there were 31 percent girls in the 2017-19 batch as against 16.5 in the previous 2016-18 batch. At IIM Bangalore, the proportion of girls in a 405-student batch rose to 28 percent, which was also the highest. And it’s not just the gender diversity that has improved this year; there are also many more students coming in from non-engineering backgrounds at the country’s premier management institutes. At IIM Ahmedabad, for instance, for the postgraduate programme in management (PGP) and the PGP-FABM (Agri-Business management course), the proportion of non-engineering students has risen to a 15-year high at 32 percent. The PGP batch also saw a share rise from 20 percent a year ago to 32 percent this year, while FABM saw the statistics rise from 26 percent to 45 percent. The Examswatch website attributed these changing demographics to tweaks that were introduced to the screening process by the IIMs. The pre-interview phase of shortlisting candidates as well as preparing the merit list on the basis of interviews were changed this year, in order to have more diverse classrooms, the report said. For the pre-interview shortlisting phase, IIM Calcutta changed the weightage policy from 67, 15, 15 and 3 out of 100 for CAT score, Class X score, Class XII score and gender diversity last year to 28, 10, 10 and 2 (out of 50) respectively, thereby strengthening the weightage on gender diversity as compared to other parameters. As per data shared by IIM Bangalore, the ratio of Commerce students bagging seats has risen from six percent in the previous batch to eight percent this year. At IIM Calcutta, the share of non-engineers stood at nine percent last year. Even in terms of work experience, 80 percent of the batch at IIM Bangalore had averaged around 30 months, as against 76 percent last year.