5 Types of People IIM’s are biased against

Though the criteria for selection in the various IIM’s have changed for the better in the past few years, there are still some types of people whom feel biased against by the IIM’s. Though the IIM’s may have succeeded in having better diversity in their classes by setting very skewed criteria, they are going against the general rule of having the most meritorious students in the college. So, here are the 5 types of people the IIM’s are biased against.

1) Engineering Graduates from Mumbai University

Engineering Graduates from Mumbai Univesity were the ones who were biased the most this season by IIM Ahmedabad. How?

As you can see, for anything below 90% in Engineering, the candidate gets less than or equal to 7 points while a commerce graduate needs only 70 percent to get 9 points. It is not so problematic for most universities as Engineers are generally the highest scoring students. However, in Mumbai University, getting 90 or 95% is very difficult for Engineers.

I understand that this has been made to make the MBA class more diverse, but then there should at least be Normalization (yes, I know you hate this word) of scores amongst the different universities.

2) People who messed up their Academics due to any reason

IIM Kozhikode gave 50 % weightage to CAT 2010 score. 20% weightage was given to SSC (10th) scores and other 20% to HSC (12th) while other 10% weightage was given to work experience.

This made it virtually impossible for anyone without poor or average academic performance to get into IIM Kozhikode this year. Similarly, few other IIM’s also biased against people with average academic score.

3) Those who are not used to technology

Though taking CAT from a paper-pencil based test to a Computer based test was a good step, it came at the expense of students who are not good at using computers.

However, I believe that managers of today’s age must know how to use a computers and hence, students must be taught efficient use of computers from an early age.

4) Those unlucky enough to not choose the right day and the right slot.

Though the IIM’s and Prometic claim that normalization takes care of everything, I, for one, do not believe that it can be fully accurate. For example, there can be two people who would have solved 17 and 19 questions respectively in a tough slot. Both of them solve all 20 in an easy slot. How would Prometric know that the first one could solve only 17 in the tough one? This is just an example. There can be many such cases. Normalization cannot take care of everything.

IIM students should try their hands at Poker too.

Hence, there comes another factor in CAT… that of proper selection or lucky selection of date..

5) Merit VS. Reservations

Though this is a very sensitive issue and many people may believe that reservations are helping uplift the poor, this is not the case. The poor people are not the ones who are getting the benefit of reservations. The ones who get the benefits are the ones who are already from well to do families.

And who suffers? The meritorious students are the ones who suffer. Out of the total 2600 seats in the IIM’s, more than half go as reservations. People with reservations have much better chance to get a call as well as to convert the  call while someone with 99.5%ile doesn’t get any IIM Calls because he was not amongst the reserved categories.

Now, lets have some sensible comments.