IIMs to look for more girl students

   Directors of five IIMs from across the country, who met in Kolkata recently, felt the need to change the quantitative bias in the Common Admission Test (CAT) to draw in more students to their classrooms from diverse academic backgrounds.

Giving a wrap-up of the discussion, IIM-Calcutta Director Sekhar Chowdhury said the issues would be dealt with seriously though it was not yet certain whether these changes could take place from next year’s CAT.

“In many cases, despite efforts to get in students from other backgrounds, the number of engineering students has increased. The blame is on our admission process. We need to change how we admit students and how CAT is organised,” said IIM-Lucknow director Devi Singh.

IIM-Bangalore director Pankaj Chandra felt girl students found the CAT examination with its stress on mathematics a deterrent.

Statistics reveal that about 2 lakh students take the annual CAT examination for admission to 2,000 seats in the country’s ten IIMs.

Of  them, the percentage of engineers gaining entry into the premier B-schools is over 90 per cent, while the percentage of female students is only 10-15 per cent taking all the IIMs together.

Globally, the men-women ratio in IIMs is close to 50:50. “Why can’t we have an identical or more or less equal representation in the classrooms ? After all, the classes should represent life,” said Sekhar Choudhury.