KOLKATA : Finally the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, will see a sizeable number of women students walking into the campus. This is the result of a new admissions formula that IIMC adopted this year, precisely to break the traditional male domination on campus. Women have been given extra points this time by IIMC to help them secure admission, a bold step that is being observed with interest by the two other bigger IIMs - Ahmedabad and Bangalore.

The IIMC faculty expects at least 100 women to take admission in the 2013 academic session, which is double the usual number. Post CAT results the selected candidates now have to clear a written ability test and an interview to finally make it to the IIMs. According to the new admissions formula adopted by IIMC this time, three extra points have been given to women at the pre-interview stage to enable more women to make it to the interview. As a result of this "grace", of the total number of candidates coming for interview, at least 25 per cent are women. "If you take absolute numbers into consideration, 395 women will be appearing for interview this time, which is a large number considering the fact that last year only 170 came for interviews. This has been possible because of the three extra points that we have given to every woman who has qualified for the written ability test and interview," said Sanjit Singh, the admissions chairperson of IIMC.

The total number of seats at IIMC is 462, going by the past trends, at least 20 per cent of the total number of women interviewees get selected. "If you convert that into absolute numbers, about 100 women would finally get admission at IIMC. This is about double the actual number and we feel that our purpose is served," Singh added.

The institute decided to tweak its earlier admission formula where all candidates were treated equally because the composition of the student body was "skewed". "Without a healthy percentage of women on campus, men are bound to get rowdy and indisciplined. Moreover, as young managers they need to be sympathetic to women’s issues. So we decided to give extra points to women CAT successfuls to help more women come into IIMC, something that they were not being able to do without this little extra help," said a faculty member.

IIMC felt that since 23 per cent students in higher education in India today are women, there is no reason why this should not be the case at the IIMC campus also. The tweaking was done at the post CAT stage since the basic quality of students would be determined by this eliminating test.

"Our experience with women candidates have shown us that they are able to express themselves better both in wriotten test and interviwes when compared with their male counterparts. Hence we decided to give the additional advantage to women CAT successfuls at the second level whebn candidates are shortlisted for the interview," Singh explained.

Though IIM Ahmedabad and Bangalore have not yet implemented this formula, they would be observing the goings on at IIMC post the new shortlisting formula with great interest. "We are going with the old pattern this year too. Earlier there would be only 10 per cent women on campus. these days it has slightly improved, so we are waiting for sometime," said IIM Ahmedabad admissions chaorperson, Arnab Laha.

