The profile of the 2009-11 batch reflects the dominance of students with an engineering background.If reports are to be believed IIM-Calcutta (IIM-C) has 93 per cent candidates admitted to the post-graduate programme are from engineering background and the rest are from all the different academic backgrounds.

This year, IIM Ahmadabad(IIM-A), will have a batch with fewer women and more ‘high-performing’ engineers in its flagship post-graduate management programme.

However, hard IIM tries to achieve a good mix of students from various streams, engineering students, always make a dominant presence on campus.The admission committee did not have much of a choice, given that only engineers scored well in the first round of selection based on the Common Admission Test and educational background. There has been a limited pool of candidates from arts and commerce backgrounds making it to the first round.

Unlike last year, the number of girls entering the coveted institute fell sharply. For the 2009-11 batch, as many as 19% of the entrants were women, a sharp rise from the 2008-10 batch figures of 6%. This year, however, just 11% of the successful candidates are girls.

While 369 out of a batch of 385 are engineers, only one student from the arts background has made it to IIM-A, and only nine students, or 2% are from the commerce background, as against 4% last year. The others have a degree in science. The institute has maintained the percentage of candidates with prior work experience, at 61% of the total batch. The previous batch had nearly 60% candidates with work experience.

With the strength of the current batch has gone up from 315 to 385, 182 candidates belong to the general category, 104 are from the NC-OBC section, 87 from SC-ST and 12 from the differently-abled category. In a shift from last year’s practice of offering tutorials to students from the SC/ST category who are weak in communication, mathematics and computing skills, the institute has broadened the scope to include students from the general category as well.