Hi Prince,

The best rated examination of India, Common Admission Test or CAT is conducted by the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM). 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.

These are the top institutes where you can get a seat through CAT, provided you achieve the right percentile and clear the further process rounds.

All the very best!!