Due to the dominance of engineers in the Indian Institute of Ahmedabad (IIMA), the IIM has made significant changes in its admission policy to increase the number of students from non-engineering background to 18% from the current level of 4% students with non-engineering background.
The 2014-2016 batch of IIMA may have students from diverse background such as commerce, arts, humanities, agriculture or science as the IIMA has decided to change its admission rules to get students from other backgrounds.
Over 96% of students in the 2013-15 batches have engineering background at IIMA and in order to reduce this figure, IIMA has proposed two major changes in CAT-2013, which would help the IIMA to admit students from diverse backgrounds – first being the formula for calculating the application rating (AR) has been changed, and a provision for direct shortlist for the written analysis and personal interview (WA-PI) round for top performers in the five academic categories has been included.
Weightage to postgraduate study and work experience has not been included in the AR but the weightage will be given to performance in class X, XII and graduation. To recognise exceptional performers across diverse academic backgrounds, top 50 candidates or top 1% of the number of applicants to IIM Ahmedabad within each category-- whichever is lower -- will be identified. These candidates will be directly shortlisted for the WA-PI on the basis of their total scores from CAT 2013.
For a long time, IIMA has received criticism for admitting majority of engineering graduates in their PGDBM courses. IIM Bangalore and IIM Calcutta have higher percentage of non-engineers in their current batches as compared to IIM-A.
