IIM Ahmedabad Short Listing Criteria CAT 2006: General, OBC, SC, ST & PWD Categories

Short-listing Candidates for Admission to Post-Graduate Programme (PGP) 2007-09 of

IIM Ahmedabad

Available Seats in the Post Graduate Programme 2007-09 of IIMA
A total of 280 seats are available for admission to the Post-Graduate Programme 2007-09 of IIM Ahmedabad. The break-up of 280 seats for various categories of students is given under:
General - 192, OBC (6%) - 17, SC (15%) - 42, ST (7.5%)- 21, PWD (3%) - 8

Minimum Cut-off Requirement of IIM Ahmedabad
In the CAT 2006 bulletin, IIM Ahmedabad had announced the minimum cut-off requirement for each section and overall score as given under:
“Please note that the cut off for short listing SC/ST/PWD candidates for group discussion and personal interview would not be less than 17% score in each of the three sections of CAT-2006 and no less than 25% score in aggregate. For other categories, it would be no less than 25% in each of the three sections and no less than 33% in aggregate. The actual cut-offs used for short-listing, however, may be higher than the above mentioned percentage scores and would depend upon the performance of candidates in CAT-2006.”

Category-wise, the number of candidates, who met these criteria in CAT 2006, is as under:
General : 3431
OBC : 174
SC : 168
ST : 20
PWD : 14

Category-wise Short-listing Criteria and Number of Candidates called for Group Discussions and Personal Interviews
From the qualifying candidates meeting minimum cutoff requirement, the candidates were short-listed
on the following basis:

1. General Category candidates: Out of qualifying candidates, who applied for PGP of IIMA, 608 General category candidates were short-listed. Candidates, whose percentile in each section was above 95.33 and who have an overall percentile above 98.3, have been called for the GD & PI.

2. OBC Category Candidates: Out of qualifying candidates, who applied for PGP of IIMA, 55 OBC category candidates were short-listed. OBC Candidates, whose percentile in section 1 and section 3 was above 90 and who have an overall percentile above 98.3, have been called for the GD & PI.

3. SC Category Candidates: Out of qualifying candidates, who applied for PGP of IIMA, 123 SC category candidates were short-listed. SC Candidates, whose percentile in section 1 and section 3 was above 65 and who have an overall percentile above 85.3, have been called for the GD&PI.

4. ST Category Candidates: Out of candidates, who applied for PGP of IIMA, all 20 ST category candidates, who met minimum cutoff requirement, were short-listed for the GD&PI.

5. PWD Category Candidates: Out of the candidates, who applied for PGP of IIMA, all 14 PWD category candidates, who met minimum cutoff requirement, were short-listed for the GD&PI.

CAT 2006 scorecard / result out

The IIMs have announced the results for the Common Admission Test (CAT) held on 19th November 2006. After a brief confusion yesterday morning, where the online link after being put up by one of the IIMs was subsequently withdrawn, has been sorted out and you can find out your CAT 2006 scores here now.

For those of you, who have got the desired percentile scores, a hearty congratulations. I hope you are already gearing up for the crucial Group Discussion & Personal Interview rounds. While IIM Kozhikode seems to have announced the results, the other IIMs seem to have delayed the results and the situation will be clearer in a day or two. Officially, 6th January looks to be the new deadline for announcing results.

Now, there were close to 2 lakh students who wrote the CAT 2006 and in spite of your best attempts, there will be lots of you who would miss the desired IIM call. What should one do?

- if you have narrowly missed the call, it may be a very good idea to gain some work experience in the coming year and write the CAT again in 2007.

- if for some or the other reason, you do not want to wait for another year, go for the next best options only: viz MDI Gurgaon, MICA Ahmedabad, NITIE or some of the other top b-schools through the other tests like FMS & XAT

- if your percentile scores are much lower, say below a 60 percentile, then you need to do some serious reassessment of your performance and future options. Do you think you had put in optimum effort this year? If no, then you may try again next year. If yes, then you may have to look beyond MBA. Please remember that there is not much point doing an MBA from just any b-school - an MBA will add value to your profile only if it's done from a decent place so take your time before deciding. Consult your teachers and friends - they would know you well to give you a good advise. At least look at the world beyond MBA also - there are plenty of emerging fields and you would surely find something of your interest. It may not be a bad idea at all to make use of scientific career planning tools like Psychometric Analysis to find out your areas of interest, strengths & weaknesses.

- don't lose heart, always remember that the IIMs are a very good option but not the only one. Cheers!

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IIM websites:
Ahmedabad - http://www.iimahd.ernet.in
Bangalore - http://www.iimb.ernet.in/
Calcutta - http://www.iimcal.ac.in
Lucknow - http://www.iiml.ac.in/
Indore - http://www.iimidr.ac.in
Kozhikode - http://www.iimk.ac.in

CAT-CALLS

A call from a reporter working with a leading news channel yesterday evening got me thinking in more ways than one. He was asking for my comments on the 3 errors which had crept into the CAT 2006 question papers. Now that's an alright thing to do but his further prodding made me sit up and realize that this seemingly harmless line of questioning may actually not be so. My first reaction had been spontaneous and honest, almost so much so that it got me worried that he would put me on record for saying what i had. But i would only soon realize that i had nothing really to worry about because the answer i gave was exactly the opposite of what he wanted, and it fortunately, had no chance of making it to the airwaves. This became quite clear when he put his next question which was actually the same question again, but the language had undergone a complete transformation. When i would still not react in the way he wanted me to, out came question number 3, which was actually question # 1 again but now it came with the answer already prefixed with it. All he was seeking was a certain reply which had not been forthcoming, so words were being put into my mouth now. Luckily, i had realized the trap well in time and didn't fall for it.

"When there is no news, it's often created by the newsmen", once said Vir Sanghvi. Yesterday's experience coupled with a few news pieces i read in the newspapers and saw on the news channels today and i understood what the ace journalist was trying to say that day. I was at my Barakhamba Road office on the CAT afternoon and had met dozens of students who had just written the most important examination of their lives. Each one of them was well aware of the 3 errors but not one was making a hullabaloo about it. The general opinion was that it was not expected from the IIMs and that was it. No one thought the mistakes could have impacted their future lives. After all there were 75 questions and even the best had attempted only 50 odd questions. You had plenty of questions to not attempt, so a complication here n there and they had all proceeded to the next question without much ado. But this is lean season for newsmakers, and they scented blood here. All that was needed were a few comments from the various stake holders – students, parents and training institutes like mine. That’s how the phone-call fitted into the scheme. Thank you Mr. Sanghvi, for the forewarning.

The C.A.T is not news, it happens every year but mistakes in the CAT questions had potential. Almost 2 lakh people wrote the CAT this year, up by almost 40% from last year so the CAT is definitely getting popular. Now there are less than 2000 seats in the six IIMs put together which means most students can't make it to the top. Could their frustrations be tapped into? After all we are talking about almost 2 lakh families now which translates into a million people. A million people is a lot of people, enough to take the TRPs up by a decimal point or two. In the cut-throat world of news channels, that’s reason enough to sit up, take notice and make news!

CAT 2006: The changes

What used to be about 170-180 a few years back has now reduced to just 75. If you look at the last four years, the decline seems to have been a very planned affair. 150, 123, 90 and now 75 - that's the number of questions asked in the CAT( Common Admission Test to the IIMs) in the last four years in reverse chronology. Experts say it's a move towards the GMAT-ification of CAT. I don't know whether they are right about that but if that's the raison d'etre behind this shrinking basket of questions, it's a pitiable one. What makes more sense, and is possibly the correct rationale is that the IIMs have realised that what can be tested over 175 questions can as accurately be done over fewer questions, just that they have played it safe by following a gradual approach towards this. My own feeling is that they have hit the peak this year, and we will see this graph plateauing over the next few years.

The most impacting change this year was interestingly the least visible one. Increasing the number of options is at first impression not too great a change, but it can change the whole test-taking-technique dynamics. You will need a little more education before you take an educated guess now!! The game of elimination becomes a tad more time consuming. It may change the way you go about solving a problem completely. And there's a 20% more chance of you getting confused between two options. Other changes this year included an increase in the test duration to 150 minutes and a return to the traditional uniform marking scheme.

While these structural changes are important and affect the test takers, it's the anatomical changes in the CAT that happened this year that are without doubt more crucial. When I met Ravi Kiran, a student at the IMS Barakhamba Road branch, minutes after the test, he seemed confident about his chances but was more than a little disappointed that his many hours spent learning the finer nuances of the English grammar had gone completely waste. A mere glancing through the English section was sufficient to understand Ravi's point. Not a single grammar or usage based question was asked this year. All that was important this year was reasoning and interpretation. When i spent a little more time with the paper, i realised that although it was not as obvious in the Problem Solving section, a similar philosophy had been adapted there as well. Logic and conceptual understanding counted far more than any technical knowledge of mathematics. I will not be far off the mark if i were to say that the IIMs have reduced the importance of both English and Mathematics in the CAT.

All in all, three things would count this year:
1.Conceptual Understanding
2.Logical Reasoning & Other Reasoning Skills

3. How good an interpreter you are - your ability to arrive at decisions based on given texts and data.

All three are important attributes seeked for in a manager, and that's why at IMS we keep saying, "Take the CAT like a Manager".

For a detailed analysis of CAT 2006 and to know the possible cut-offs for the IIMs, MDI, MICA, TAPMI and other institutes click here