I have done BA French with 97%. im sure to get 95% in CAT. Will IIMs select me? Will IIMs give preference to ug in other disciplines compared to ug degree in language. Will Bcom graduates stand a better chance than me, as my ug is BAFrench ?

Hi Joseph,

IIMs accept candidates from all disciplines, especially major opportunities are given to the ones who do not belong to Engineering domains. Now, what happens in reality is maximum marks are usually scored by people belonging to engineering domain due to the design of engineering courses which boost their analytical and critical thinking.

Thus, in general, cutoffs for students belonging to Arts domain for IIMs are usually decreased a bit, so here you will be having an upper hand.

For example, to get into IIM A, an Engg student needs an average of 99.5 percentile while for a student from other disciplines (BA / BCom) needs no more than 98 percentile.

Now, again CAT is a 300 mark paper and the highest marks scored is sometimes around 250 (100 percentile), 95% i.e. 285 is an extreme difficult task.

If you're talking about 95 percentile (which is around 155), that is a legit score. And with such a percentile, and with Arts as your UG, be assured to get a great B. School (although not IIM A,B,C)

Also, to answer your next question, No, Commerce students will not get any extra benefit by virtue of their discipline.

Last but not the least, being a non-engineer, you will already have an upper hand for CAT, do utilize this opportunity and try to score as much as you can in CAT. A percentile of around 98 and above with decent 10th and 12th marks will ensure entry into the top IIMs (IIM ABC) as well.

Hope this was helpful.