dna special: Graduate Management Aptitude Test encourages women to pursue mgmt courses

Many business schools, including Indian Institute of Management (IIM), have been trying hard to bring in diversity. Not only by admitting non-engineering students but also by having more women in class.

Of course, it often becomes a challenge for B-schools to have enough representation of female students as not many choose to take the management aptitude or entrance tests, be it Graduate Management Aptitude Test (GMAT) or Common Admission Test (CAT).

Take the case of GMAT. In India, of the total participation in the exam — that guarantees a ticket to B-schools — only 26% female candidates took the exam in 2012 whereas in Vietnam, over 60% examinees are women. Similarly, in CAT, of the 2.15 lakh registrations, 60,000 were female candidates.

What concerns Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) — that governs GMAT — is that participation of female students in GMAT is lower than countries like China where nearly 65% female candidates take the test. Now, to encourage more female students to take GMAT, the council is in the process of initiating a drive to reach out to students and explain the importance of GMAT and how it would benefit them.

In Gujarat, four institutes give admission on the basis of GMAT results. They are Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) for its PGPX course, Mudra Institute of Communication, Ahmedabad (MICA) for its postgraduate diploma in management, Adani Institute of Infrastructure Management, Ahmedabad, and Entrepreneurship Development Institute.

“This is a good move by GMAT. Having gender diversity is desirable but not at the cost of merit. There must be a level playing field for candidates of either gender. Also, candidates from non-technical background are welcome as there has been a serious issue of only engineers sitting in a class, which makes learning from diverse backgrounds, with multi-disciplinary and cross-functional discussion, a rarity. Business is not only engineering, and, hence, the entrance exam pattern needs to be tweaked to make it approachable to non-engineers. The unjustifiable high ratio of male engineers in the class should come down,” said professor Anurag Agarwal of IIMA.

Ashish Bhardwaj, vice-president of Asia Pacific, GMAC, who recently visited Ahmedabad, said, following requests from business schools to have wider participation from women, they will launch a drive March onwards to reach out to more women-only colleges.

“If you look at MBA colleges, it is dominated by engineers and engineering is male dominated. This means, women are self selecting themselves out of the MBA race, which could be because tests in India are quant or mathematics heavy. And, there might be a fear that if a student has not touched mathematics after X or XII, how would she clear the exam,” said Bhardwaj.

Again, claiming that the GMAT pattern was not maths heavy, he said: “You can be a student of liberal arts or history. But still you can give GMAT and do well as analysis suggests that the exam is cracked by both engineers and non-engineers.”

Bharadwaj said lack of women’s participation in the exam comes out. “At the test level, there are two problems. Not many women and non-engineering students take the test. Therefore, not many women and non-technical background students go to B school. Therefore, less participation from the two classes in corporates as well as women and people of non-engineering background in a company board,” he explained.