The results of the Common Admission Test (CAT) are out. Management seat aspirants across the country — 2,46,546 who sat for this important examination on November 16 — found that the results this year were easy to access. Previously, candidates could check their percentiles only online and had to wait for call letters from the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) to be delivered by post. This time around, the IIMs seem to have pulled up their socks, beefed up the bandwidth and provided an integrated web site, making the process simple, quick and easy, almost at the click of a mouse.
The web site worked with clockwork precision, and candidates were saved the otherwise tedious, anxiety-ridden process of browsing through different IIM web sites and going through multiple servers crashing through the day.
With nearly 4,500 getting call letters, one significant part of this two-stage battle is over. CAT 2008 is only the first stage of the admission process to the much-coveted Postgraduate Programme in Management on offer at the seven IIMs in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Indore, Kozhikode, Lucknow and Shillong.
For the few who made it, the path ahead is steep, long and arduous; with barely 2,000 seats on offer, the competition will be tough. Ajay Arora of the Triumphant Institute of Management Education (T.I.M.E.), Bangalore, said that the number of candidates called for group discussion (GD) and personal interviews (PI) has seen an increase. “This can be attributed to the fact that the next level of the quota for Other Backward Classes will kick in from this year. With this, the number of seats will naturally see an increase,” he said. For instance, the number of seats on offer at IIM, Bangalore, has gone up from 250 in 2007 to 275 in 2008. Furthermore, IIM, Bangalore, in November, announced that it had decided to increase its intake for its Postgraduate Programme in Management (PGP) by 75, increasing its total capacity to 345.
Mr. Arora had a piece of advice for candidates who received calls for the GD and PI stage, scheduled from the second week of February. “They should start preparing for the GD and PI in earnest. Though the CAT results are being announced around 10 days late this year, the IIMs are not going to change the GD and PI dates. GD and PI will be held during early February and this leaves students with only three weeks’ time to prepare.”
Experts point out that cut-offs are not common for all IIMs. Neither is themodus operandi used to short-list students for the second stage.
For instance, 100-percentiler Lakshmisha S.K. was surprised that he did not receive a call from IIM, Kozhikode.
Same is the case with Ameya Mhatre, who shares the perfect score, but did not get a call from IIM, Shillong. What more can an institute want from a candidate who has scored a perfect 100?
“Maybe, it has to do with the fact that my engineering marks aren’t top-notch. I do not know,” Mhatre says.
No comments:
Post a Comment