Advantage girls, non-engineers in IIM admission

Updated on: Saturday, August 27, 2011

For years, every class at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) was boringly uniform. Students were mostly boys, with only a sprinkling of the other sex. In class these young men thought similarly, used identical logic and took decisions that were alike, for they were all hardwired to behave in a certain fashion at the engineering campuses they came from.

In a strange correction to break the monotony, the IIMs have decided to award special marks to girls and non-engineering students during admission. All the six new IIMs and the ones at Lucknow and Kozhikode feel it’s time to rebalance the gender scales in office spaces. So, while IIM-Rohtak will give 20 marks to each girl and another 20 to a non-engineer, IIM-Raipur will add 30 marks to the overall scores of each girl-non-engineer. IIM-Lucknow has decided to grant five marks to each girl and two to non-engineers. “It’s for the first time that we have taken a conscious decision to make the diversity on our campus richer. Hence apart from the CAT scores, academic performance in class X and at the graduation level, and work experience, we will award marks for two diversity factors—gender and academics,” said IIM-L admissions chairman Arunabha Mukhopadhyay. IIM-Raipur director B S Sahay said all new management schools jointly took the call. The new IIMs have decided to replace group discussions with a Written Ability Test. “The aim of GDs was to test candidates’ communication skills but many students get coached and those who can’t raise their voices go unheard,” says IIM-Trichy director Prafulla Agnihotri.

Advantage girls, non-engineers in IIM admission

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