Hello Ninad,

During the interview, the members of panel wants to know about you, and how much passionately you are doing things in your life. They go through your academic profile as well. If you have some extra and interesting things to show it will definitely attract the panel. And they are bound to ask questions related to that course. If you are able to give answers, you will surely get benefitted. But stating a certificate doesn't means marks always. Your marks may get deduce also, so be careful.

Hope this will be helpful.

Good luck

Hi Ninad,

CAT scores are used for admission by 20 IIMs and various other management institutes across the country. Approximately about two lakh students or more appear for this exam every year.

CAT started in 1950 as a paper-based exam and transformed to become an online-entrance test in 2009. The question paper consists of 100 questions (MCQs) and the students are required to solve the same in 180 minutes. The number of questions might differ every year and are pre-informed to the students. Registration for CAT starts in the month of August or September and the exam is held in November or December.

The exam consists of four segments: Verbal, Quantitative, Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning. These segments are accordingly grouped into sections. CAT has three sections:

• Quantitative Aptitude (QA)
• Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning (DILR)
• Verbal and Reading Comprehension (VRC)

The selection process of IIMs involves a public declaration of expected cut-offs and reveal the final cut-offs only to the students involved in the process.

The top IIMs have declared their cut-off criteria as shown below,

• IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta and IIM Lucknow have declared their qualifying CAT 2019 cut offs for admission to their PGP batch of 2020
• IIM Calcutta and IIM Bangalore have fixed 85 percentile in General category as minimum qualifying percentile for CAT
• IIM Lucknow has fixed 90 percentile in General category as minimum percentile for CAT for the upcoming academic year
• The lowest qualifying cut off is of IIM Ahmedabad at 80 percentile

There are various factors that determine the percentile kept for CAT cut-off. They are listed below,

1. Difficulty level of the exam
2. Number of aspirants appeared for the exam
3. Number of aspirants passed in the exam
4. Number of seats in a particular institute
5. Ranking of the institute

Further there are two types of cut-offs in the selection process,

1. Qualifying CAT cut-off (IIM eligibility cut off) ,
2. Final CAT cut-off (IIM call cut off)

Let me give a snapshot of the previous year’s cut-off of some top IIMs,

As we can see, there is not drastic change in the percentile for cut-off, we can take them safely for next year as well as for a student’s target. But the IIMs declared cut-off is the final cut-off required to clear.

After the candidate has cleared the required cut-off to be eligible for further selection, they will be subjected to Group Discussions and Personal Interviews. Candidate must take this round very seriously as this round can be interpreted as selection round unlike the CAT round, which is a pure eliminator round. IIMs like IIM Shillong, IIM Kozhikode also conduct GD round based on the WAT.

After the final selection round, a weightage is awarded to entrance scores, academic profile & diversity, work experience and gender diversity, and a final merit list is generated. Based on this merit list, admission offers are made by the respective B-schools to the deserving candidates. Also, a waiting list is prepared which contains the names of the students whose admission offers will be made automatically if few students in the original list offer to back out.

All the very best!!

Dear Aspirant,

If you are aiming for IIM ABC ( Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta ) and Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi, then you have to score a minimum of 98 percentile. You can get it even at 95 percentile but since your graduation marks are low, you have to score a minimum of 98 to get a call from anyone of the above mentioned colleges.

hope this helps. Thank you.

What will be the fees structure for completing 2 years of MBA

IIMs shortlist candidates for the interview stage based on their own criteria, which may be independent of each other. The process may include Written Ability Test, Group Discussion, and Personal Interviews. Performance in the CAT examination is an important component in the admission process. IIMs may additionally use other factors such as the previous academic performance of the candidates, relevant work experience, gender and academic diversity and other similar inputs in shortlisting and ranking of candidates at various stages of the admission process. The processes, academic cut-offs and the weights allocated to the evaluation parameters may vary across IIMs.

CAT SECTIONAL WEIGHTAGE:

IIM AHMEDABAD:

QA     DLR     VARC     Overall

General:                                  70      70       70               80

NC-OBC/Trans:                      65      65       65               75

SC:                                           60      60        60              70

ST:                                           50       50       50              60

PwD-UR,OBC,SC:                  60       60       60               70

PwD: ST:                                50       50       50               60

IIM BANGALORE:

QA      DLR       VARC     Overall

General:                           80        80          85               90

NC-OBC:                          70        70          75               80

SC:                                    65        65          70               75

ST:                                    60        60           60               70

PwD:                                50       50           50                60

For IIM-A:

10th  Rating:

Percent score       Rating Score

<= 55                            1

> 55 and <= 60           2

> 60 and <= 70            3

> 70 and <= 80            5

> 80 and <= 90             8

> 90                              10

The same rating score is used for 12th Science /Commerce Streams. For Arts/Humanities:

Percent score            Rating Score

<= 45                                    1

> 45 and <= 50                   2

> 50 and <= 60                   3

> 60 and <= 70                   5

> 70 and <= 85                  8

> 85                                   10

Minimum cut offs for Average percent of marks scores:

Stream in 12th      UR     NC- OBC/Trans     SC ST PWD       PWD -ST

Science                    80               75                  70  65  70              65

Commerce              77               72                  67  62  67              62

Arts&Humanities   75              70                  64  59  64               59

From each Academic sectors top 5% from each stream and each Category will be short listed. It might look like:

Category                                Upper Limit

General                                           100

NC-OBC-cum-transgender            57

SC                                                      32

ST                                                      16

PwD                                                    6

After shortlisting the Candidates, the selected Candidates will have to go through WAT and PI rounds. Selection at this stage will strictly be based on the shortlisting of the candidates done separately for each Category ) on the basis of their Final Composite Score. . The numbers selected in different reservation categories will be in proportions mandated by law.

Personal Interview Multiplication Factor (PIF) = 0.50

AWT Multiplication Factor (AWTF) = 0.10

CAT Score Multiplication Factor for Final Composite Score (CATF_FCS) = 0.25

Application Rating Multiplication Factor for Final Composite Score (ARF_FCS) = 0.15

After the AWT & PI round, admission offers are made by IIMA to successful candidates. The final selection is based on a diverse set of attributes which includes performance in CAT, performance in AWT & PI, academic, co-curricular and extra-curricular achievements, work experience, etc.

For IIM-B:

For all the Candidates shortlisted, the 10th and 12th board results are initially adjusted by dividing each such score by 90th percentile score of that board. And then an adjusted score is calculated for the Bachelor's degree for each of the candidates based on the final scores obtained by the candidate are used for the Bachelor's degree and professional degrees. For example,

CAT = 40

10th board = 20

12th board = 10

Bachelors = 20

Gender Diversity = 2

Work Experience = 8

The 40 points for CAT are derived from the performance in each of the three sections as follows:

Verbal & Reading Comprehension - 14 points

Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning - 16 points Quantitative Aptitude - 10 points.

Hello Himel, Greetings!

CAT cutoffs for any individual IIM is not a single number and they vary highly depending on your profile.

IIM-A insists much on diversity so cutoff %ile depends on other people's marks of the same field. Academic scores(10th, 12th and Graduation) above 80–85% is kind of must. In CAT, Mostly for engineers it is above 99 %ile and for fresher boys it is even higher. Non engineer girls with a good profile can expect a call at 96–97%ile also.

IIM-B puts a lot of emphasis on work experience so for freshers it is way too tough. Equal emphasis on Academics like Ahmedabad.

IIM-C is most flexible with work ex and acads compared to A and B. CAT is usually above 99 %ile.

IIM Indore’s call is most specifically dependent on your 10th and 12th marks and those having a low score in it ( below 87–88) should not expect a call at any CAT %ile.

For new IIMs, there is a common interview which you have to appear if you have no call from old IIMs. They usually have a cutoff around 96%ile.

Thank you, hope this helps.

Hello shashank

It will depend on the scholarship you are eligible for mostly students gets scholarship in a range of 2-6 lakhs over the course which means they need to pay 15 lakhs as fees to IIM(any ).

There are many scholarships provided by different organisations and also from government.

You have to pay atleast half of the fees of course.

I hope it helps