About 75 CAT toppers are planning to file a writ petition in the Supreme Court seeking a stay on the second stage of admissions at IIMA, state media reports. The candidates say they did not receive interview calls because the institute made changes in the eligibility criteria after the test was conducted. These criteria —Class X, XII and undergraduate course marks — eliminated the CAT toppers from the second stage of IIM admissions despite aggregate and sectional CAT scores being way beyond the cut-off that was set. In a telephonic interview with Tanushree Bhatia, IIMA’s admissions chairperson Diptesh Ghosh explains the procedure for shortlisting candidates for personal interview and asserts there has been no foulplay
Q: In a reply to an RTI query you have said that the eligibility criteria for shortlisting candidates for personal interview was changed on January 12, much after the test was conducted. What was the need to do so?
A. A 50 per cent in undergraduate course is only the minimum percentage required to be eligible to take CAT test. Traditionally, after the CAT test, an IIMA committee sits and decides the criteria for the next level, which is the personal interview. You have to understand that the competition is cut-throat. Suppose, we have a large pool of candidates scoring 99 percentile.
How do we select the candidates for interview? We obviously have to look at their marks in class X, XII and undergraduate course. So, we take into consideration two components to shortlist them: The academic component which is the CAT score and the application rating that looks at the class X, XII and graduation marks.
Q: Why didn’t you disclose the application rating criteria earlier?
A. CAT scores are considered for admissions to 200 institutes. Therefore, we can only set the minimum eligibility criteria for the CAT test.
The criteria for final selection of candidates will differ from institute to institute. In its CAT bulletin, IIMA had clearly mentioned that CAT is only the first level of the selection process. IIMA and other institutes set a second level of criteria after looking at the pool of candidates who have cleared CAT.
Q. But when have the students who have scored 50 per cent in undergraduate course, your eligibility criteria for CAT, ever made it to the IIMs? Why not raise the minimum percentage of marks to 70 per cent or 80 per cent?
A. Let me give you an example. Say, we set a cut-off of 70 per cent in class X, XII and undergraduate courses. Then, an MBA aspirant who has scored 68 per cent in class X, 90 per cent in class XII and 90 per cent in undergraduate course will not be eligible to take CAT.
As per the current eligibility criteria for CAT, we are allowing a candidate to compensate for less marks in class X with marks scored in class XII and undergraduate courses.
Q. Can Application Rating change every year?
A. Application rating can anddoes change every year because student profiles too keep changing.
SHORTLISTING CRITERIA FOR IIMA PERSONAL INTERVIEW
General Category : 540 candidates whose percentiles in each section were 94 and above, and who had an overall percentile of 99 and had an Application Rating of >= 21 were considered for personal interview. NC-OBC Category: 193 NC-OBC candidates whose percentiles in each section were 84 and above and who had an overall percentile of 94 and an Application Rating of >=19 were considered for personal interview. SC Category: 108 SC candidates whose percentiles in each section were 75 and above and who had an overall percentile of 80 and an Application Rating of >=17 were considered for personal interview. ST Category: 55 ST candidates whose percentiles in each section were 50 and above and who had an overall percentile of 80 with an Application Rating of >= 16 were considered for personal interview. DA Category: 21 DA candidates whose percentiles in each section were 65 and above and who had an overall percentile of 80 with an Application Rating of >=16 were considered for personal interview.
