There are two kinds of folks who aim to clear the CAT -- the 'MBA nahin to kuch nahin' and the 'Kuch nahin to MBA.'

The first category discovered at an early age that M, B and A spelt the magic and politically correct answer to the inevitable question: "Beta aap bade hokar kya banna chahte ho?"

The second took the medicine-engineering route only to be disillusioned with their course of study or future prospects. No particular pyaar for management but chalo, paisa to kam se kam zyaada milega.

The MBA programme -- which allows graduates from ANY stream to apply -- thus offers one final hope of personal and professional salvation.

In India, the MBA magic has worked on two fronts. Say you plan to do an MBA and parents will be a lot less worried about your taking up Eco or Commerce and avoiding the PMT/JEE.

Secondly, in case you did make it through those toughies and find you haven't the faintest interest in electronics or electrocardiograms, you can at least dream of leaping off the wrong bus onto the MBA bandwagon. The 'luxury coach' that offers a ride in the fast lane!

Unfortunately, these coaches are very few and very hard to get a seat on. And although in theory ANYONE from any background has an equal chance at making it there, the statistics paint a different picture.

Check IIM Ahmedabad's Class of 2006 profile -- 70% engineering grads, 8% commerce, 4% IT, 4% science 4%, 3% arts, 1% medicine. Incidentally, Ahmedabad has traditionally had a much more diverse class profile in the IIM fraternity -- the Class of 2004 at IIM-B, C and L all boasted 78% engineers!

The stats should bust a few prevailing myths:

Fact #1: Doing a management course at the undergrad level gives you absolutely no edge. Only 1% of IIM A's 2006 class had an BBA/BMS background.

Fact #2: Humanities are a bad choice if you dream of making it to an IIM. Even among the 3% Arts graduates who've made it, most would be students of Eco -- a quasi-numerical subject.

To put it extremely bluntly, only exceptional 'ordinary graduates' -- the kind who could probably have made it to an engineering school but chose not to -- make it to an IIM A. Many in fact come from colleges like SRCC and St Stephens where the cut-offs for Honours courses are mercilessly high.

Even among the engineers who make it, a large percentage are from the creme de la creme schools -- the IITs, RECs, VJTIs and DCEs. The IIM Calcutta batch profile in fact lists 'engineering' and 'IITs' as two separate categories! Together these grads hog close to 80% of the seats at the Institute.

Why should engineers dominate so completely in an area which purports to offer entry to any kind of graduate?

According to UGC figures (as of March 2002), India's 253 universities and 13,150 colleges churned out 2.5 million graduates annually. Of that number, just about 300,000 -- or 10% -- were engineers.

Now logically one may argue that those who make it through highly competitive engineering entrance exams represent the cream of the nation's Class 12 crop. So four years later they are again more likely to excel when it comes to another competitive exam.

Engineering as a course enjoys such a halo that all but a small sliver of the intelligent school age population ends up in that stream by default!

There is another, more disturbing explanation. Engineers have a huge advantage when it comes to numerical ability. The vast number of ordinary graduates, especially those who have not been in touch with mathematics since Class 10, simply cannot cope.