Archive for the ‘New IIMs’ Category
Newer IIMs Stay Low on Gender Balance
Most of the newer Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have a long distance to cover before they can catch up with their older counterparts on gender diversity. The percentage of women in the 2013-15 batch at four IIMs in Tiruchirapalli, Ranchi, Shillong and Udaipur, has dropped – in some cases sharply. Only three of the seven new IIMs – Rohtak, Raipur and Kashipur – have managed to surpass last year’s numbers. The six older IIMs have all outdone last year’s performance (ET, June 17).
At IIM-Shillong, which is in its sixth year, the percentage of women has fallen to 22% this year from nearly 30% of the batch last time. IIM-Ranchi has seen the numbers drop to 8.75% this year from 18% in the 2012-14 batch and IIM-Udaipur, to 13.6% in the 2013-15 batch from 28% last time. The sharpest fall has been in the case of IIM-Trichy, where, at 52.9%, more than half the class of 2012-14 comprised women. This year, it’s a mere 15.7%.
With the exception of IIM-Shillong and IIM-Ranchi, all the new IIMs awarded extra points to women in the interest of gender diversity. It worked in some cases, like that of IIM-Raipur or IIM-Rohtak, where the institute has seen the percentage of women jump nearly five-fold to 47.6% from 9.6%.
“There is a feeling in the government as well as corporates that increased representation of women is the need of the hour. That’s true of educational institutes as well,” says IIM-Rohtak Director P. Rameshan. The institute gave women students extra points for gender diversity at the time of shortlisting.
IIM-Trichy, on its part, gave one percentage point extra to women candidates, marginally lower than what was given last year. But Godwin Tennyson, Chairperson, Placement and External Relations, IIM-Trichy says that cannot be the only reason for the higher proportion of women last year.
“The percentage of women admitted in an IIM has many drivers starting from the percentage of women who cleared CAT and qualified for the admission selection process. A candidate gets admitted based on about seven dimensions: written analysis test, personal interview, work experience, performance at undergraduate level, masters degree or professional qualification, gender and CAT score,” says Tennyson. “So, the chance of someone getting admitted to an IIM is a complex function with many moving parts. We cannot filter out a single dimension that really contributed to the admission of a student,” he adds.
IIM-Shillong, on its part, says it has always focused on meritocracy and diversity of the participants, and not on gender diversity for their PGDM course. Diversity is not about one programme alone, says MJ Xavier, Director of IIM-Ranchi. So while the institute’s PGDM programme has seen a fall in the number of women, their PGDHRM programme has a much higher proportion of women – nearly 37%, or 16 out of 43 students.
“Between the various programmes including FPM, we have around 20% women on campus. Without giving marks for gender diversity, we have still managed to attract a lot of women,” says Xavier. “However, since most people are giving extra marks for women, I may be forced to do that from next year,” he added.
Added the IIM-Ranchi Director: “We are trying to achieve diversity across many dimensions such as educational background, work experience, masters degree and gender. Overall, all these dimensions contribute to the learning experience in the class. At the same time, we also try to ensure that quality of the batch is not compromised for diversity.”
With corporates trying to shore up their gender diversity numbers and IIMs serving as one of the most critical pipelines of managerial talent, there’s a buzz across campuses about getting more women on board. Already, there have been changes made in the pattern of CAT: 50% weightage to language skills as well as a written test during the admission process, both designed to get more women.
The number of women applicants in CAT has also seen an increase to 60,876 in 2012, which represents 28.4% of total applicants compared with 27.3% in CAT 2011.
Debashis Chatterjee, Director of IIM-Kozhikode, which at 54.29%, has the highest number of women across all IIMs, says the institute was responding to market demands for diversity. For the past 40 to 50 years, 8% to 10% was the average composition of women in IIM classes, he says, adding: “That was lopsided, the diversity skewed in terms of gender. Now it’s not only about correcting the balance, but also about creating the necessary aspirations among women.”
Global B-schools, he says, now decide diversity profiles before they admit students. “Once diversity is made a consideration, more women apply. IIMs don’t have to give points to women. They just have to change their lens,” says Chatterjee.
Source: The Economic Times, July 5, 2013
Newer IIMs seek professional help to get their students placed
The younger IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management) are seeking professional help to get their students placed and create better linkages with industry to deal with a muted job market and bigger batch sizes. Final placements at IIM-Ahmedabad, considered the B-school benchmark, have had a muted start (ET, February 11). The younger IIMs too may have a poor run in final placements, necessitating dedicated effort on their part. Institutes such as IIM-Kashipur, IIM-Ranchi, IIM-Rohtak and IIM-Shillong have hired – in most cases, on contract – advisors in corporate relations and placement to reach out to companies with information on the work they are doing and the quality of students.
The professionals, mostly from HR or sales and marketing backgrounds, are filling in for the already-stretched faculty at IIMs. Traditionally, at the premier institutes, faculty members take up additional charge of facilitating the placements process. Advisors are charging a fee ranging from Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 1,00,000 for four days a month. Placements – whether summer internships or the finals – have been a challenge at the new IIMs, more so with increased batch sizes. “It’s the toughest year yet in terms of placement,” says P. Rameshan, Director, IIM-Rohtak. The institute is trying to place 122 students, as against last year’s 47.
The advisors have been given the mandate of building relationships with top management in companies, sourcing talent for corporates, organising and initiating chairs and endowments, getting corporate sponsorships for events, handling various stakeholders and marketing the institutes’ brands. “It’s like a start-up challenge. We need time to establish and promote the institute. There are companies who don’t even know where new IIMs are. Also, the market realities of placements can’t be wished away,” says Gautam Sinha, Director, IIM-Kashipur.
It’s all about professionalising the process, says IIM-Ranchi Director MJ Xavier. The institute’s summers process, which started in September, is almost complete while the finals process, which started in January, is expected to wrap up in first week of March. It had a batch of 160 students to place in the summers while the finals process has 66 students, up from last year’s 44.
The institute has roped in Arijit Majumdar as advisor, external relations, to help with the process. Majumdar has a good 30 years of experience at various levels of management across FMCG, publishing, media and entertainment industries. He has also served as chief of corporate relations and external affairs at IIM-Shillong in the first two years of its existence. IIM-R is also looking at making a proposal to the board to get a headhunting firm to do the job, with a team working full-time on placements and external relations.
IIM-Kashipur has roped in Partha Dasgupta, who has 34 years of experience of working in the corporate sector. Dasgupta, a post graduate in personnel management and industrial relations from Xavier Institute of Social Service, Ranchi, is on an annual contract to help enhance the institute’s brand, and match students’ profiles and skills with jobs available at various companies.
Till date, 50 companies have come for the summers and finals and the figure is expected to touch around 80 in a week. The batch size for summers and finals is around 40 students each. “A major challenge for companies is the logistics as Kashipur is a non-metro.
While the feedback on the quality of students is good, the salary bands are not that high,” says Dasgupta.
IIM-Shillong, which has had professional help from its inception, says it is showing results. “We are more comfortable this year. We have had to struggle due to our location,” says Keya Sengupta, Director of the institute, which is trying to place a batch of 105 students. The institutes are hoping that every step in this direction will soon make them names to reckon with.
Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), February 15, 2013
New IIMs turn to branding before placement season
To compete with their older, better-established peers, new Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are using marketing and branding tactics to attract recruiters in the placement season — an effort that management manuals would perhaps liken to a survival strategy.
Weeks before the placements begin, three of the six new IIMs — in Rohtak, Raipur and Kashipur — have conducted conferences to bring top human resources (HR) executives to their campuses. A fourth one — in Ranchi — is hosting a similar conference next week. The locations of the other two new IIMs are Udaipur and Tiruchirapalli.
“Currently, IIM-Kashipur is not on the map. We have to tell the industry that it is on the horizon now. It will help branding of the new institute and of course help in placement,” said K. M. Baharul Islam, a Professor and Chairman of Administration at the new IIM. The first batch of graduates from the institute will enter the job market this year, he said, explaining that such an effort “will create awareness and goodwill among the HR top brass” towards students of the B-school.
Currently, there are 13 IIMs, including the six new ones, which opened in 2010-11. The seven older IIMs are located in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Indore, Kozhikode, Lucknow and Shillong, and have been in existence for longer and are therefore, more familiar to recruiters who descend on their campuses yearly for choosing new management hires.
For the newer B-schools, marketing themselves is “crucial as HR is an important link in the placement process,” said Ajith P., a professor at IIM-Rohtak. “Through such events, we try to establish the relationship better.” Both experts and the B-schools say the competition for jobs is set to increase among the IIMs because their number has almost doubled since 2010. The placement season typically starts in November and runs through March.
India has some 3,500 B-schools, but only the top 30-35 including the IIMs, attract leading businesses for recruitment.
With little research happening in B-schools, placements become a yardstick of their brand value. Last year, around 60 management schools sought the technical education regulator’s permission to shut shop because of their poor admission and placement records. While placements are certainly a key driver, the new IIMs say that during the initial years, marketing efforts also give their students and faculty exposure to the demands of the recruiters. “It helps get feedback to improve curricula and exposure for faculties,” said Islam of IIM Kashipur.
Ankit Sharma, a student of IIM-Raipur, said many of his classmates don’t have work experience and the interaction with potential employers is valuable. “After the conference, we have grown friendly with some HR heads who came to the campus. They work as mentors in a sense (from) thereon,” Sharma said.
Source: Mint, September 19, 2012
New IIMs to synchronise placement process to beat competition
The new Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) plan to join hands to beat competition from their older peers. The institutes told Business Standard they planned to synchronise their placements on the lines of those such as IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta.
“The older IIMs synchronise their placements. Similarly, the newer IIMs can co-ordinate the placement process so that there is no job loss and the whole process is transparent. We will be exploring this option,” said Godwin Tennyson, placement chairperson at IIM-Tiruchirappalli.
Though the number of IIMs has gone up in the past two years — from seven to 13 — the pool of companies which these B-schools approach for placements, remains largely the same. Therefore, they are devising strategies to get companies to recruit from their campuses, too, apart from the older IIMs.
The new IIMs say given a smaller batch size (older IIMs have around seven times the batch size of newer IIMs), they provide companies with an option of not recruiting in bulk. So, deals are being worked out where the new IIMs tell companies to recruit 75 per cent of their work force requirement from older IIMs and 25 per cent from the newer IIMs.
“The pool of the big recruiters remains the same. And, with most of them having been recruiting from the older IIMs, there is a loyalty factor. This makes it imperative for the new IIMs to come together to beat competition from other B-schools,” said a placement committee member at IIM-Ranchi. Sanjeev Parashar, chairman, placements at IIM-Raipur agrees. “All the IIMs should work as part of a consortium as far as placements are concerned. There should not be any competition within the new IIMs. Our students are already in touch with students from other IIMs so that competition does not become unhealthy,” he says.
This is not all. The newer IIMs, in order to get the maximum number of companies on campus, are trying to keep their placement dates around the same time as their mentor IIMs. This would allow them to attract the same set of companies. Placement details at IIMs, say placements chairpersons, are always kept under wraps, except for the three big ones — Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta — which largely coordinate placements and share placement details with each other.
This apart, the newer IIMs are giving day zero slot to companies which are given a day three slot at the older IIMs. Many IIMs are also inviting a number of recruiters on campus to meet and interact with students. To have more companies on campus, the younger B-schools are organising live projects, colloquiums and HR conclaves to build relationships with companies.
The older IIMs however, are not deterred. “With a growing number of B-schools, the job pie will also shrink for every B-school. While it will be survival of the fittest kind of a situation, older IIMs are a brand and companies will flock to them for their quality of students,” said the placement chairperson from one of the older IIMs.
Source: Business Standard, August 28, 2012
New IIMs line up innovative courses
While the flagship PGP programme will continue to be the mainstay of these institutes, the focus will also be on a host of other initiatives developed according to individual competence. These include everything from centres of excellence in areas like energy management, resource management and education management to programmes in areas of social and economic significance like public health, public policy and 
manufacturing management.
“With stagnation in enrollment in the West, several internationally-reputed schools are eyeing the Indian market for more students. In this context, we cannot be yet another business school offering the typical US model of education,” says IIM-Ranchi Director MJ Xavier. The institute believes in a fusion of East, West and the region (Jharkhand, Bihar) and has identified a few areas of growth, namely: East (Indian management, inclusivity and sustainability), West (neuro management) and regional (energy management, public health, mining and public policy).
For neuromanagement, IIM-Ranchi has tied up with the Central institute of Psychiatry while for business analytics, it has entered into a tie-up with IBM, and recruited faculty for both courses. “In 2013, we are launching an 18-month part-time energy management programme in collaboration with a leading US university, as well as a certified public health worker programme. We are yet to find partners for the mining programmes while we propose to tie up with a UK university and offer programmes for bureaucrats soon in the area of public policy,” says Xavier.
IIM-Rohtak Director P. Rameshan says that over the next few years, the institute intends to focus and develop expertise in areas in which the older IIMs have shown neglect. These are aligned with the future growth requirements of India and include global expansion of Indian businesses, manufacturing excellence, social entrepreneurship, excellence in agriculture, excellence in services, developmental excellence, and urban management. “IIM-Rohtak also intends to scale up its programmes from time to time in alignment with the growth needs of India,” says Rameshan. “Each IIT is different, so is each NIT, so is each IIM,” says KPMG Head (Education) Narayanan Ramaswamy.
For instance, he adds, IIM-Calcutta has always been known for its quantitative strength. The idea is to leverage the IIM brand but over and above that, build a differentiator that is specific to the institute. “You have to provide a reason why someone needs to come to you. These new IIMs have the right approach,” he says. IIM-Trichy is considering a foray into areas of social and economic significance. For the near future, it has identified manufacturing and education management. The institute is planning to launch a oneyear full-time programme in manufacturing management in collaboration with IIT-Bombay.
“The main objective of the programme would be to groom the best engineers with a minimum of five years’ experience on the shop floor to take up pivotal roles in manufacturing. National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council has agreed to support this programme,” says Director Prafulla Agnihotri. IIM-Trichy is also planning to start a Centre for Education Management, which will look after the needs of the profession by conducting research, offering consultancy as well as counselling services to the educational institutes. IIM-Udaipur, on its part, will go in for applied research focused on specific regional issues.
“We want to make a difference to the region and are going to work with the Rajasthan state government in figuring out ways in which we can do so,” says IIM-Udaipur Director Janat Shah. IMU plans to set up three centres of excellence: Center for Development Management where it plans to work with Udaipur-based NGOs; Centre for Tourism that takes advantage of the Udaipur location and Center for entrepreneurship and Innovation. Evidently, development in tune with the region’s requirements is high on the agenda of the new IIMs. In keeping with Chattisgarh’s role as a power hub, IIM-Raipur too plans to set up a centre of energy management for extensive research in the field. Also on the anvil is another centre for innovation and entrepreneurship. “Additionally, we will have a centre for resource management.
Chattisgarh has huge natural resources, with around 44% of forest cover; we have to address these issues in the larger interest,” says IIM-Raipur Director BS Sahay. “IIMs are created for a bigger purpose than just an MBA,” he says. Specialised courses rolled out by the institutes will serve as another revenue stream, especially for the future, but, they say, this not the main aim. “Our focus really is to build competency. If revenue were the only thing we were looking for, there are other avenues like distance education which are much more lucrative,” says IIM-Ranchi’s Xavier.
Source: The Economic Times, April 24, 2012
Placements dispel worries over new IIMs
An IIM is an IIM, no matter where it is. (Well, almost.) That seems the message from placements at the three Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) at Raipur, Ranchi and Rohtak that will see their first batch of students graduating this year, with companies offering salaries that are just a little lower than those offered at the handful of B-schools that follow the older IIMs in any listing of India’s top management institutes.
Officials at the three business schools said all their students who sought jobs had received offers in a year that has seen business sentiment dip and the economy slow. That doesn’t seem to have affected the three schools, which still operate from temporary campuses. It wasn’t easy, admits M. Kannadhasan, Chairman (Career Development and Placement Office) at IIM-Raipur (which abbreviates as IIM-Rp). “It was a challenge, but we did a good job,” he said.
IIM-Rp said the average annual salary offered to its students was Rs. 1.25 million; IIM-Ranchi (which abbreviates as IIM-Ra) Rs. 1.32 million; and IIM-Rohtak (IIM-R) Rs. 1.22 million. These numbers (provided by the respective schools) compare favourably with Rs. 1.21 million at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), although they are lower than the Rs. 1.38 million at Gurgaon’s Management Development Institute (MDI) and Rs. 1.63 million at New Delhi’s Faculty of Management Studies (FMS).
Average salaries offered to the graduating batches at IIM-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), IIM-Bangalore (IIM-B) and IIM-Calcutta (IIM-C) weren’t immediately available, although they are likely to be significantly higher. According to media reports, last year, the average salary at IIM-C was around Rs. 1.75 million. At IIM-A (which follows a stringent reporting standard for salaries), the number, as disclosed by the school, was Rs. 1.63 million.
Next year may be better at IIM-Ra, said a student who will graduate in 2013. “If this is the response for the first batch, then we can expect a better show next year,” said Yash Aggarwal, a student of the second batch at IIM-Ra, who confessed that when his batch joined, they weren’t sure about the school, given its age and location. Such anxiety, the tag of being a “new” IIM, and India’s economic worries were only some of the challenges faced, said P. Rameshan, Director at IIM-R. The school also had to ensure its placement record was befitting of an IIM.
Some firms said they will only consider recruiting from the school in the future, he admitted, but there was no shortage of companies willing to hire students from the first batch. It helped that Rohtak is close to Delhi and its environs, he said. Still, the school took no chances, with the director tapping his contacts from 15 years spent teaching at IIM-Lucknow and IIM-Kozhikode, and also hiring a “specialist recruitment officer”.
IIM-R was the first of the three new IIMs to complete its placements, according to Rameshan. At least 27 companies participated in the process and made 58 offers to a batch of 47 students. Several students received domestic offers exceeding Rs. 2.5 million a year, said the B-school’s website. IIM-Rp said it will release details next week. At IIM-Ra, 30 recruiters made 65 offers to 43 students, and the highest salary on offer for a job in India was Rs. 2.3 million.
The recruiters will “measure the performance of the first batch”, said Bharat Gulia, senior manager of education practice at audit firm Ernst & Young, and base their hiring next year on that. Still, “achieving 100% placement with no permanent campus and an economic slowdown on is noteworthy”, he added.
Until the early 1990s, India had four IIMs (at Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Bangalore and Lucknow). In 1996, it added two more, at Kozhikode and Indore. In 2007, it added one at Shillong. IIM-R, IIM-Ra and IIM-Rp started operating in 2010, and in 2011, IIMs at Tiruchirappalli, Udaipur and Kashipur admitted their first batch of students.
Source: Mint, April 3, 2012
IIMs vs IIMs for placement pie
The older Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have competition from the younger ones. After learning the tricks of the trade from their mentors, the younger IIMs are now approaching the regular set of companies that visit older IIMs for placements. “B-schools are many, but big recruiters are the same. Older IIMs are the big daddies. So, it becomes imperative for us to devise strategies to beat competition from them. We have managed to get around three companies to recruit only from our campus this year,” said a placement committee member of an younger IIMs.
“Our batch size is much smaller compared to the older IIMs. Hence, we are fine if a company does not want to recruit in bulk. We are telling companies that if they are to recruit 15 students from a given campus, they can recruit at least five from ours and the rest from an older IIM,” the placement committee member added. With six new IIMs — Ranchi (Jharkhand), Rohtak (Haryana), Raipur (Chhattisgarh), Thiruchirapalli (Tamil Nadu), Kashipur (Uttarakhand) and Udaipur (Rajasthan) — the total number of IIMs have gone up to 13. While placements are on at the older IIMs, three IIMs — Ranchi, Rohtak and Raipur, among the new ones, are undergoing final placements at present. Younger IIMs say they do not have any database of companies, and contrary to claims that they would need support from the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) to place students, they will not seek any one’s help.
Placement details at IIMs, say placements chairpersons at these institutes, are always kept under wraps, except for the three big IIMs — Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta — which largely share placement details with each others. “In this case, the key is to begin placements early to have the first mover advantage. We try to keep our placement dates around the same time as the older IIMs. This enables us to attract the same set of companies as that of our mentors,” a placement committee chairperson said.
The newer IIMs are also dishing out a deal to the companies. If a company, on a said IIM campus has been given a day three slot, the younger IIMs are giving them zero day slots. Prafulla Agnihotri, Director, IIM-Thiruchirapalli, who was also the placement chairperson at IIM-Calcutta earlier, says, “I did have the comfort factor with HR directors of many companies since I headed placements at IIM-Calcutta. But if these companies are recruiting from our Trichy campus, that is because they believe in our students.” Agnihotri says he invited a number of recruiters on campus to meet and interact with students. The companies have used the same platform to evaluate students. “Though many companies have come to our campus given my relationship with them, they have recruited because we are brand IIM,” adds Agnihotri.
The older IIMs say this is obvious, but is not worrying them. “This is natural. Jobs will be distributed. As the economy grows, there will be enough jobs to absorb students from newer campuses. Besides, the older IIMs are a brand and companies will come to them for recruitment.” To have more number of companies on campus, these younger B-schools are organising live projects, colloquiums and HR conclaves to build relationships with companies. Top consulting firms however, are giving the younger IIMs a tough time. “Their policy is not to recruit from a campus which is less than five to six year old, and so they are not entertaining us,” said a placement coordinator from one of the new IIMs. It will be a while before the younger ones can flaunt the crore plus salary figures.
Source: Business Standard, February 23, 2012
IIMs aim to raise own resources, hike staff pay
The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have requested the Centre that they be allowed to raise funds from alumni networks and corporates to supplement budgetary support. The additional funds will help finance existing operations and new initiatives at the country’s premier business schools.
The director of an IIM told FE that the government’s financial burden will come down if the institutes are allowed to leverage their own resources for expansion and infrastructure programmes. “We discussed this proposal with the human resources ministry at a recent workshop as the government cannot finance the requirements of all public institutions in future. The ministry is keen on giving us this autonomy,” said an IIM director.
The Planning Commission’s approach paper to the 12th Five Year Plan had recommended that IIMs should be encouraged to raise money through various legitimate means. According to the director of a new IIM, old institutes have the advantage of vast alumni bases while new ones can benefit from corporate philanthropy.
Each IIM is a society formed under Societies Registration Acts, having a memorandum of association (MoA) outlining its objects and rules. The board of governors is responsible for the general superintendence, direction and control of the affairs of the society and its income and property. The IIMs depend on government support for most of their finances. Recently, the HRD ministry amended the MoAs, empowering IIM boards to independently set up search-and-selection committees to shortlist three candidates for the post of director. In the new regime, four of the five old IIMs (except IIM-Calcutta) at Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Indore, Lucknow and Kozhikode are free to set up campuses, raise funds and dispose property except those purchased with public money.
“Till now, these proposals used to come to the HRD ministry but after the amendments, the institutes can take their own decisions,” said a ministry official. “The amendments will help us raise and manage funds, recruit and compensate the faculty and set up campuses in India and abroad,” said Debashis Chatterjee, Director, IIM-Kozhikode. “With the changed MoA, making faculty pay more flexible is on the institute’s agenda and it is discussing the matter with the board. We are looking at excellent faculty and ways of retaining them by topping up their salaries,” said Chatterjee. The institute is also looking at launching new programmes for working executives at its new campus in Kochi.
A review committee set up by the government under RC Bhargava, Chairman, Maruti Suzuki had suggested that remuneration of all IIM employees be determined by the board, considering market conditions to attract and retain high quality talent, ability to pay, and the need to provide motivation for performance.
Source: The Financial Express, February 2, 2012
CAT results: 9 notch up 100 percentile
The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) declared the results for the Common Admission Test (CAT) 2011 on Wednesday, in which nine aspirants have notched up a 100 percentile. Around 185,000 candidates took the test over a 20-day period across 36 cities starting mid-October, 2011.
The toppers included Shashank Prabhu, a student of Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), who reappeared for CAT despite securing a seat in a premier B-school. Prabhu said, “I didn’t manage to do so well last year, which shattered many expectations. I wanted to prove a point, which I could this year.” But he is yet to make up his mind about which B-school he wants to get into, or if he is going to leave FMS midway. On the fact that joining an IIM would mean he will lose out on a year, Prabhu said, “Whatever you do is never a waste. I have learnt many things in the last one year.”
Shikhar Goyal from Sri Venkateswara College, Delhi scored 97 percentile despite over 50% visual impairment. Goyal, who is from Hisar in Haryana and comes from a business family, said, “I applied myself to the preparations without worrying about the score.” He was provided a scribe during the test. The study material provided by the teachers at his coaching centre helped him crack CAT, added Goyal.
The IIMs and several other B-schools, including the management studies departments in the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), subscribe to CAT score. The IITs and FMS decided to accept CAT scores this year.
The convenor of CAT 2011, Prof. Janakiraman Moorthy of IIM-Calcutta, said the IIMs will start calling candidates for the next stage of the admission process with immediate effect. “Some IIMs may come out with the list from this evening itself. Within a week, all the IIMs would have sent out mails to prospective candidates,” he said. About the results, Moorthy said: “While nine aspirants scored 100 percentile, 1,800 candidates scored 99 percentile and above.”Vinayak Gupta, a student of Economics (Honours) with Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi who scored 99.89 percentile, said: “The 15-minute trial was a great help, and the test was better organized.”
This year, many of the new IIMs, including those in Tiruchirapalli, Udaipur and Raipur, have increased their intake from 70 to 120. This will improve the chances of making it to the prestigious institute.
Source: The Times of India, January 12, 2012
New IIMs set to break tradition, scrap group discussion round
The six new Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are set to make a radical break from tradition by doing away with the group discussion (GD) that forms a crucial part of the selection process at the elite business schools. The change in the admission process, with a written test replacing the discussion round, will take place at the IIMs in Raipur, Rohtak, Ranchi, Udaipur, Tiruchirappalli and Kashipur in the coming year. “Instead of going for individual GDs in every single institute, we are going to hold a common written analysis test for all the six new IIMs,” IIM Raipur Director B.S. Sahay said.
The seven older IIMs won’t be changing the way in which they currently pick students. Candidates selected after the Common Admission Test (CAT) are called for the GD round in which they are broken up into groups of 8-10 that analyse a particular topic. They may at times be given a case study and asked to come up with a solution. A panel observes the groups and evaluates students based on their contribution to the discussion. A final selection is made after interviews with chosen candidates. The GD round discriminates against those candidates who are low-key in demeanour.
IIM Rohtak Director P. Rameshan said the business schools are complementing each other rather than competing with each other. “The ability to understand and express properly is an asset. Business communication is all about expressing it in the right way,” Rameshan said, adding that his institute was giving this aspect more value.
The focus in the proposed test will be on the practical and will offer an insight into how an individual takes up a challenge, analyses it and communicates it effectively to take control of the situation, said Sahay. A common written analysis for all the new IIMs will reduce the burden on students as they won’t need to travel from one city to another to attend individual GDs, he said.
Students may be given 15-20 minutes for the exercise, and the result will be applicable to all the participating IIMs, said Rameshan. Communication skills, especially writing capabilities, are very important for practising managers, said Ajay Arora, head of the TIME chain of coaching centres in Karnataka. “With the services sector growing in India, its value has gone up,” he said. “You need to be a good communicator.”
The move will also simplify the selection process, Sahay said. The proposed test will take place before the personal interview and after the CAT results are published. CAT 2011 will be conducted between 22 October and 18 November to allow candidates the flexibility of choosing a test date. The total number of test dates will, however, be 20, the same as last year.
Currently, there are 13 IIMs, including the six new ones. The seven older IIMs are located in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Indore, Kozhikode, Lucknow and Shillong. This year, the test will be conducted across 36 cities and experts expect the number of applicants will be higher than last year, when 204,000 candidates registered compared with 242,000 in 2009.
As reported by Mint on 26 July, IIMs have announced a new format for CAT 2011, with two sections instead of three and more time for answers. The sections will have to be attempted sequentially—once an aspirant completes the first segment, the candidate won’t be allowed to return to it. The exam duration will be 140 minutes instead of 135 minutes. CAT went online in 2009.
Source: Mint, August 10, 2011
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