IIM-A decides to increase the number of students from non-engineering background to 18% from the current 4%

Updated on: Thursday, August 08, 2013

Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) is proposing fewer changes with CAT-2013 to reduce the number of engineers among new students given admission.

In a significant change in its admissions policy, the premier management institute has decided to increase the number of students from non-engineering background to 18% from the current 4%.

Further, under the new system, the number of students without work experience or a postgraduate degree is also set to increase in the personal interview round at IIM-A as the institute will not give any points for work experience or for a master's degree. Currently, fresh graduates constitute around 27% of a new batch.

According to the institute, over 96% of students in the 2012-14 and 2013-15 batches have an engineering background. To reduce this figure to the mid-80s, IIM-A has proposed two major changes in CAT-2013 that will have considerable impact on the composition of the batch: the formula for calculating the application rating has been changed, and a provision for direct shortlist for the written analysis and personal interview (WA-PI) round for top performers in the five academic categories has been included.

The IIMs have been criticized for becoming bastions of graduate engineers, most of whom are from the Indian Institutes of Technology. The changes proposed in the admission criteria are in line with the IIM-A's desire to increase admit new students from diverse academic backgrounds.

"There were several complaints since the past two years that, due to the multiplicative calculation of AR scores, there was too much focus on marks obtained in 10th and 12th standard examination. Under the old system, if the candidate had fared badly in any one of the exams but showed exceptional performance otherwise, it would have hampered his chances in getting shortlisted. By giving more weightage to performance in the undergraduate degree and shifting to a completely additive model, the proposed system makes sure that recent performances are given adequate weightage as performances farther back," IIM-A posted on its blog with data compiled by the institute's media cell.

IIM Bangalore and IIM Calcutta both have higher percentage of non-engineers as part of their current batches as compared to IIM-Ahmedabad.

IIM-A decides to increase the number of students from non-engineering background to 18% from the current 4%

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