Aiming for IIM-A? Work ex, engineering degree won't help you anymore

Are you an engineering graduate waiting to get into one India's premier B-schools? Well, here's some bad news for you.

The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, has decided to admit fewer engineers starting 2014 by making significant changes in its admission policy.

The premiere B school has decided to increase the intake of students from non-engineering backgrounds from the present 4 percent to about 18 percent, while the number of students without work experience or a PG degree will also be increased in the personal interview round at IIM-A.

According to a report in the Economic Times, the institute will try to increase the diversity in the classrooms by directly shortlisting the top 50 ranked applicants in the Common Admission Test and discount work experience and masters' degree while calculating the Application Rating (AR), a shortlisting stage.

[caption id="attachment_1020891" align="alignleft" width="380"] Reuters[/caption]

Work experience will be a factor only at the stage of interviews, the report added.

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This move is likely to result in a surge in the number of applications from students straight out of undergraduate colleges.

Moreover,a provision for directly shortlisting for the written analysis and personal interview (WA-PI) round for top performers in the five academic categories has been included for the first time at IIM-A.

Another report in DNA says weightage would only be given to performance in classes X, XII and graduate degree and not to scores in post graduation courses.

According to the institute, over 96% of students in the 2012-14 and 2013-15 batches had studied engineering due to whichthe formula for calculating application ratings has been changed.