More girls taking CAT, less reaching IIM-A
Number of Girl Students joining the B-Schools PGP course
has been declining :
Ahmedabad : Analysis of students getting into
the countries top B-school Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) shows
that although more and more girls are taking the common admission test (CAT),
not
many are making it to the final list.
The number of girls in IIM-As flagship course, Post Graduate Programme in Management
(PGP), is dipping since last 3 years. While the number of girls who got admissions
in PGP dropped from 16% in 2009 to 11% in 2010, this year it stands at 10.9%.
Alumnus of IIM-A from the PGP batch of 2004 Vivek Tuteja, who runs a prominent coaching
class for CAT aspirants in various cities, said that the reason for less number of
female candidates making it to IIM-A could be because of the consideration of work
experience of candidates by the institute and the online CAT.
Tuteja said, this can be attributed to two factors. First, profiling by B-schools and
work experience is also becoming an important criteria and number of female applicants
with work experience is less as generally women are more stable at work and less
likely to change once they start working.
Secondly, if we compare this with other B-schools where the exam is not conducted
online, selection of female candidates is not seen to be declining there. So there
may be a case of problem in accessing IT facilities for girl students leading to
a situation where in they are not adept at tackling the online tests.
The drop in the figure has occurred despite an increase in the number of female
candidates taking CAT. While there were 19.56% girls among the CAT candidates in 2008, the
figure was 26% in both 2009 and 2010.
In 2009, a total of 817 students were given interview calls of which 99 were girls. Of
these, 52.5 per cent got admission offers.
While this success rate improved to 55.8 per cent in 2010, it declined to 45 percent
this year. Out of 91 girls that who got interview calls, only 41 girls got admission
calls this year.
Courtesy: Times of India
