The earlier article on batch demographics (b-schools ranked 1-10) highlighted the increase in the number of girls this year while showing that engineers constitute an overwhelming majority there. For b-schools ranked 11-25 though, the trend is upside down.
On an average, engineers in these b-schools formed about 80% of the batches. As many as 6 b-schools – Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (SIBM), Pune, Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ranchi and Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Ghaziabad – saw a decrease in number of engineers this year. TISS saw a spectacular drop of 20 percentage points in the number of engineers. The three IIMs – Shillong, Ranchi and Trichy – continued to have a very high proportion of engineers.
The reason for the big drop in the number of engineers at TISS is discussed here. Private b-schools such as Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) Mumbai and SIBM admit students via their own exams which are easier than Common Admission Test (CAT) thereby resulting in more non-engineers getting through. The increase in number of engineers at JBIMS (from 79% to 87%) can be attributed to the elimination of GD/PI round in the admission process this year. The 5 percentage point increase in the number of engineers ( 75% to 80%) at Symbiosis Centre for Management and Human Resource Development (SCMHRD), Pune can be linked to the fact that the institute abolished essays this year, a traditional weak area for engineers.
While academic diversity is indeed encouraging, these schools rank very low in the gender diversity area. At SJMSoM and IIM Ranchi, female students form only 9% of the batch. Apart from these two, six other b-schools – JBIMS, Indian School of Business (ISB) Hyderabad, IIM Shillong, IIM Trichy and IMT Ghaziabad has seen a decline in percentage of girls. IIM Trichy, infact, has a landslide drop in the number of women students (53.4% to 15.5%). While DMS IIT Delhi has shown an increase in the number of girls, the percentage is still very low at 10% of the batch. TISS again has done well here with women comprising 45% of the batch, up from 20% last year.
Again, the patterns at some schools such as JBIMS and TISS can be linked to the admission process overhaul this year. IIM Trichy’s big drop is most puzzling. Despite offering 1% extra weightage for female candidates, the steep drop suggests that it was a combination of different factors. The low numbers at SJMSoM and DMS IIT Delhi are possibly co-related to the low number of women engineers.
Perhaps, these b-schools could do well to pick up a trick or two from their higher ranked peers to increase the women candidates. This can help them achieve that good blend of academic and gender diversity.
See the entire data here
Note: National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE) Mumbai did not provide the data.