IIMs to court more women, arts students

MUMBAI: The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are preparing to add more colour to campuses, taking in students from diverse disciplines in

an attempt to reflect the changing dynamics of the corporate world.

From a time when these institutes churned out an assembly line of graduates essentially from engineering and pure science backgrounds, the post-graduate programme in business management in 2010 could see more students from the liberal arts, and more women.

At least two schools — IIM Kozhikode and IIM Lucknow — are planning to look beyond Common Admission Test (CAT) scores, and scan students’ backgrounds more carefully at the time of selection. There are IIMs in Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Kozhikode, Indore, Bangalore, Kolkata and Shillong, with over 1,200 seats.

In addition to the CAT score, academic record, scholastic achievements and performance in the field of work often count during the selection procedure, which involves a group discussion and personal interview. “We would like to ensure that we have diversity in terms of gender, academic backgrounds and work profiles so we are able to cater to the requirements of different industry segments and functional roles,” says IIM Kozhikode director Debashis Chatterjee. Adds professor Himanshu Rai of IIM Lucknow: “In doing so, if the percentage of engineers in a batch falls, then so be it.”

At the heart of the change in thinking is the realisation that the CAT, which tests students’ quantitative analysis and data interpretation, may exclude students from a non-engineering or science background. “These sections are easier for engineering students to solve than those from the liberal arts, as a result of which engineers or those from science background have a better chance of getting selected,” says ARKS Srinivas, director of TIME Mumbai, a private coaching school that helps students prepare for management entrance tests.

Typically, IIMs witness proportionately fewer people from non-engineering or non-IT backgrounds and women, each year. A cursory look at the student profile of the 2010 batch shows the representation of science, commerce, arts and other professional students is in single digits. Of the batch of 280 students in IIM-Calcutta, 92% are engineers and just 8% are women.

It’s a similar story at most IIMs. At IIM-Ahmedabad and IIM-Bangalore, engineers make up 90% of the total batch strength. At IIM-Lucknow, engineers comprise 91% of its total batch of 320 students, and 10% are women. The 2009-11 batch at IIM-Kozhikode comprising 313 students has 92% engineering graduates, and 10% women.