IIMs modify admission rules for non-engineers
Academic and gender diversity, work experience, among other things, are likely to be given more weightage
While some Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) altered intake policies to encourage more non-engineers to join a few years ago, IIMs such as Ahmedabad and Calcutta have announced recent changes for PGP 2017-19 batch.
While less weightage is proposed to be awarded to CAT 2016 scores, academic and gender diversity, academic profile, work experience, among other things, are likely to be given more weightage. This is aimed at not giving a particular section of test takers an advantage in the CAT.
The selection of the candidates for admission to the 2017-19 batch of the PGP at IIM-A is a two-step process. In the first step, candidates are short-listed for Academic Writing Test (AWT) and Personal Interview (PI) from among the candidates who have a valid CAT 2016 score, who have applied to the programme and who satisfy the eligibility criteria for the programme.
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The weightage on CAT score is 70% for shortlisting for interviews, which is unchanged from last year. The weightage on CAT score for the final selection is 28% this year, reduced slightly from 2015 when it was 35%.
“To ensure diversity at IIM-A PGP, every year a certain number of top candidates from each of seven different academic categories (broadly medical, professional degrees like chartered accountancy, company secretaryship, cost and works accountancy, science, commerce, arts, engineering and others) are shortlisted for AWT and PI on the basis of their composite score ‘CS’ (computed based on CAT score and academic performance) subject to their fulfilling certain criteria,” says a spokesperson from the IIM Ahmedabad admissions committee.
A certain number of candidates from each of the academic disciplines will be shortlisted for AWT and PI on the basis of their composite score, subject to the fulfilling of criteria. This figure may go up to 5% of the total candidates in one discipline, as compared to the top 1% earlier.
At IIM Calcutta, for the 2016-18 batch, the weightage for shortlisting for personal interview and written ability test was 67% for CAT score and 15% each for Class 10 and Class 12 scores. Women candidates also got 3% extra in a bid to boost gender diversity.
As per the new policy, the CAT score will be 28 (56%), Class 10 and Class 12 score will be 10 points each (20% each) and gender diversity 2 points (4%).
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