CAT over, now IIMs slug it out to get the best students

With varying shortlisting criteria and cut-offs, new and old IIMs battle for CAT top performers. Charu Sudan Kasturi reports.

The battle is no more restricted only to students for seats at the Indian Institutes of Management – the premier B-schools are caught in struggle among themselves to get the best students to their Institutes.

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Caught between a decreasing number of candidates taking the Common Aptitude Test (CAT) and a growing number of IIMs, the Institutes are faced with a stiffer competition among themselves for top brains than ever before.

As opposed to 2.2 lakh students who appeared for the CAT last year, only 1.8 lakh appeared this year. But the number of IIMs has increased from seven to nine, and the older seven IIMs have more seats to fill than last year because of mandatory expansion to compensate for OBC quotas.

Seven of India’s nine IIMs have already shown their cards, unveiling their criteria for shortlisting candidates who will receive calls for group discussions and personal interactions (see chart). The remaining two – IIM Bangalore and IIM Indore – have started their own process of picking students to call for the second stage.

The variation in selection criteria ranges from IIM Calcutta and IIM Ranchi that are shortlisting students based purely on CAT scores, to IIMs in Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Kozhikode, Rohtak and Ranchi which are also factoring in performance in school and undergraduate examinations. (see chart)

The highest aggregate cut-offs have been set by IIM Ranchi followed closely by IIM Calcutta – which is mentoring the Ranchi institution.

But individual section cut-offs have been kept low by IIM Ranchi, as a tactic to lure students with high aggregate scores who may not meet individual section scores of IIMs in Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta.