The wheels of the 2013-15 batches across b-schools in India are well in motion. Taking a look at the batch demographics and admission criteria bring to light some interesting points. In this article, we focus on the first 10 b-schools from the PaGaLGuY B-school Rankings 2013.

The most interesting point is the steady rise in women students across these b-schools. The biggest jump is for Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Kozhikode where women comprise more than half the batch (53.1%, up from 27.3% last year). At IIM-A, IIM-C, Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) Delhi, and IIM-I female students form 21.6% 23.6%, 29%, 30.7% of the batch respectively, as opposed to corresponding figures of 16.8%, 11%, 18.6%, 16.3% last year. The only b-school where the trend is reversed is Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi where women have gone down from 23% to 15%.

Now, why this happens. The biggest gainer, IIM-K is also the biggest donor with 5 marks being awarded to women candidates. This puts the women candidates applying to IIM-K at a big advantage. IIM-C offers 3 marks while IIM-L awards 2 additional marks for gender diversity. Since IIM-A has not disclosed the weightage of attributes under the 70% PI component, one cannot pinpoint at the cause for increase in female students. But the surge seems to suggest that there was a conscious effort from the interview panel to be more gender sensitive. At IIM-I, CAT scores are only used as cut-off and not accounted for later. Perhaps, therein lies the reason for more female candidates getting through. Traditionally, men have dominated the list of high CAT scorers.

For all the talk of academic diversity, engineers continue to dominate with close to 90% composition across b-schools. IIM-B, XLRI and IIFT saw an increase in the number of engineers by a few percentage points. IIM-C and IIM-K saw the number of engineers come down by close to 4 percentage points. At SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) Mumbai, the number of engineers came down from 85% to 80.8% of the batch.

IIM-B’s admission criteria rewards rigour, something engineers are better at than non-engineers. Higher emphasis on entrance exam scores at XLRI and IIFT possibly justifies the increase in engineers. At IIM-I, no emphasis on CAT scores after the initial screening tilts the scales towards non-engineers whereas lack of sectional cut-offs favours non-engineers at IIM-K. At SPJIMR, increased focus on profiles gives a more level playing field to non-engineers.

IIM-A recently changed its admission criteria to bring in more non-engineering students next year. Whether tweaks like these will helping b-schools achieve the required balance remains to be seen. For now it seems like a rainbow chase.

See the entire table here