New Delhi: Every year, lakhs of students prepare for the IIT-JEE and CAT entrance tests with a burning desire to walk into the hallowed portals of the premier IITs and IIMs. But only a handful of them, (around 10,000 in IITs and roughly 13,500 in IIMs) make it to these campuses. The number of women getting admission is even low.
But concerted efforts, especially by IIMs to end gender disparity, appears to be yielding results. According to an Economic Times report, most of the older IIMs in Ahmedabad, Calcutta, Bangalore, Indore and Lucknow will have the highest number of women students in the 2021 batch as compared to previous years.
The combined women strength in these institutes for the 2021 batch stands at 33.5 per cent, a rise of 7.5 per cent as compared to last year.
IIM Lucknow, in fact, is giving five grace marks to admit more women candidates to its campus. This year it will see the highest number of 148 women candidates out of 405 taking admission for its programmes.
In IIM Indore, 199 out of 476 candidates for the 2021 batch are women (42 per cent)
In IIM Bangalore, 165 out of 441 candidates are women (37 per cent)
In Calcutta, 152 out of 480 candidates are women (31 per cent)
In IIM Kozhikode, 148 out of 497 candidates are women (30 per cent)
The only exception is IIM Ahmedabad, the leading B-school in the country. The number of women candidates taking admission here has dipped from 26 per cent to 24 per cent (93 out of 388).
“At the shortlisting for our interviews, we have a criterion called gender diversity factor, where we give extra marks to female candidates. This has borne good results for us,” Himanshu Rai, director, IIM Indore told ET.
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