Month: August 2012

Government of India has established six new IIMs at Shillong, Rohtak, Kashipur, Ranchi, Raipur and Udaipur. All these IIMs use CAT scores for screening the candidates for further rounds of admission process. Hence CAT scores decide whether a candidate get interview call or not. Candidates of different categories need different percentiles / scores to get interview call for these new IIMs. Following are the cut offs / percentiles of 2011-12 in 6 new IIMs for PGDM admissions:

Actual Interview calls in 6 new IIMs:

Category – No. of PI calls – Lowest CAT percentile for PI call

DAP – 104 – 61.57
General – 4779 – 97
NC-OBC – 2979 – 70.54
SC – 1603 – 65.57
ST – 410 – 60.24

This would mean that there is hope for those of you with reservation who may just be thinking of giving up your preparation, because of not so hopeful AIMCAT scores. We suggest that you hang on for some more time, look at the table above, put in increased preparation and target to cross the percentiles indicated here. Academics and work experience also play very important role in IIM admissions.

Those from General Category can also draw hope from the fact that an interview call for the IIMs is possible at 97 percentile also. I have already mentioned earlier that once you get a call, the con version depends mostly on your performance in the Interview/GD/Essay and not on your work experience / academics.

IIMs follow independent admission process for PGDM programmes. CAT score is used by all IIMs for initial screening. But there is variation in the weightage given to CAT for short listing the candidates for next stage i.e., Group Discussions and Interviews. Several IIMs also give weightage for academics and work experience in short listing the candidates. See these details below:

Weight for Academics and Work Experience in Final Selection:

1) 4 IIMs – 0 percent (IIM Ahmedabad, Indore, Shillong, Rohtak)
2) 3 IIMs – 7-8 percent (IIM Calcutta, Lucknow, Kashipur)
3) 5 IIMs – 11-15 percent (IIM Kozhikode, Ranchi, Raipur, Trichy, Udaipur)
4) Only IIM Bangalore gives 47.62% weight to academics & work-ex in final selection

It can be seen very clearly, that except for IIMB, the maximum weight for workex+acads in final selection is only 15%, with 4 IIMs pegging it at 0%. The remaining weight is for CAT Score + performance in GD / Essay / PI.

It means that once the student has been shortlisted for the interview, the students chances of selection depend mostly on controllable factors – CAT Exam, GD/Essay/PI performance – which one can definitely improve on, with preparation.