Avademic Profile weightage increased to 30% from 20% last year by IIMC with 3% weightage to girls as gender diversity.
IIM-Calcutta has evened out the playing field for aspirants, increasing the weightage given to Class X and Class XII board examinations to 15% each so that engineers don’t get an advantage over other students by scoring big in CAT.
The new admission policy will come into effect from this year. Students who may have received a call from other IIMs based on their CAT score will only be shortlisted to appear in the personal interview and written ability test at IIM-C, after factoring in their Class X and Class XII marks. (primedentistry.net)
The new weightage for preliminary shortlisting for interview and written ability test is 15% each in Class X and Class XII, the official said. All these years, the B school has been giving 77% weightage to CAT score and 10% each for board exams. But from this year, it will give reduced importance (67%) to CAT score. The gender diversity factor that gives 3% weightage to girls remains unchanged.
“When the CAT score was given a higher weightage, IIM Calcutta ended up with engineers with a particular background in the interview stage. IIM-C only awarded additional weightage to non-engineering graduates in the final stage of selection. By increasing the weightage for board scores, the intention is to encourage people from non-engineering backgrounds. It will enhance the pool of graduates from other streams,” said Anindya Sen, professor of economics at the premier B-school.
Another senior teacher said: “It will allow consistent performers to cross the barrier and sit for the interview and written test. There are instances when a student with a brilliant score in CAT but comparatively poorer marks in the school board examination could manage to get a call-up due to additional weightage to the CAT score. Now, students from other streams will also get an opportunity even if they score a little less in CAT. Nowadays, commerce and humanities students also score very high marks in the board
In the 2010 batch of IIM-C, more than 90% of the students were from the engineering background, which increased to 94% in 2013 and almost 95% in 2014. “This shows that candidates from other streams fell short despite being given additional marks in the final stage of selection (after the interview and written test). The new system will hopefully give non-engineers a boost,” said an official, pointing out that the additional 3 points given to girls have improved the gender ratio at IIM-C since 2013.
