Hi Ashutosh! Firstly, let me tell you, being realistic is good, but don't be so pessimistic so soon. You still have around 4 months left for CAT. Hence, if you prepare systematically and with a properly etched strategy, you can very well get a high percentile. Coming to the question about academics, all B-schools, including IIMs, consider CAT percentile as the primary parameter, followed by other factors such as past academics, work experience etc. Some of the top 50 B-schools, which do not give any specific weightage to past academics, with a high CAT score there is a possibility of admission. On the other hand, if your CAT score is too low, then it would be difficult for you to get shortlisted by these B-schools, whose cutoffs range from 85-99+ percentiles. In that situation, the question of considering your past academics or other attributes in your profile won't arise. But, if you secure above 80 percentile, then your profile would add a boost to your admission chances, provided you perform very well at the Writing Ability Test (WAT) or Group Discussion (GD) and Personal Interview (PI) rounds.

My suggestion to you at the moment is, focus on your CAT preparation and try to maximise your percentile as much as possible. Here are some tips for you:

How to prepare for CAT 2018 in 4 months

Sectional Time Management Tips for CAT 2018

All the best!

Hello Ashutosh Gupta

You cannot speculate, you need to appear in CAT and once you have the final percentile you can look for a college, although most colleges also look into past academic performance but more weight is given to CAT score