Indian Institute of Management-Indore hints at tweak in admission criteria

INDORE: Indian Institute of Management, Indore (IIM-I) is yet to declare its admission criteria for CAT-2016, but a tweak in the criteria is indicated, if changes made by the premier B-Schools such as IIM-A, IIM-C and IIM-L are closely monitored. With most of the top B-schools giving less weightage to the CAT score this year and focusing on personal interview to attract more non-engineer students on campus, strong possibilities are indicated that IIM-I may follow their footsteps.
IIM-I's public relations officer Akhtar Parvez said, "We are yet to decide the admission criteria for CAT 2016. But, it will be declared soon." He said that the institute is closely watching the criteria announced by other IIMs. When asked whether IIM-I is also going to give less preference to CAT score this year like other IIMs, Parvez said that classrooms at IIMs have always been lopsided towards engineers who account for 90-95 per cent of students.
Now, most old IIMs including those in Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Kozhikode are actively looking to bring that down.
This year at IIM Ahmedabad, the weightage on CAT score for the final selection is down to 28 per cent from last year's 35 per cent. The weightage given to the interviews has gone up to 50 per cent from 40 per cent.
While the IIM-I did not share any target for this diversity drive, some IIM insiders on condition of anonymity said bringing down share of engineering students to 85 per cent would be a healthy ratio. Even that would take some time, they said. It is only in the last few years that most of the IIMs have been working towards diversity by bringing in more women and non-engineer candidates.