CAT 2017 – Higher Percentile in CAT not the Only Selection Criteria for IIMs

The hard to nail CAT exam for admission to various prestigious business schools all over India is scheduled for November 2017. While the candidates are working hard at the same they’re also worried and perplexed whether they would get a call from the IIMs or not.

Most of the candidates taking this CAT form an impression that only those students are shortlisted by the IIMs for Written Ability Test (WAT) and Personal Interview (PI) who obtain a score higher than 99 percentile. The truth is that no doubt you need to get a good score in the CAT exam itself, however, shortlisting candidates for WAT and PI has more deciding factors to it than just the percentile score.

Firstly, you need to understand the marking scheme of the exam. The exam contains a total of 100 questions and a student gains 3 marks for every right answer and loses 1 mark for an incorrect answer. However, for answering a non-MCQ question incorrectly there’s no negative marking. In order to be in the top scorers and get a score of 99-100 percentile you don’t need to answer all the questions, you just have to act in a prudent way and avoid answering the questions the answer to which you aren’t sure of.

Further, this also involves a concept of normalization of scores whereby irrespective of different academic background, location, etc. you come from, you are put on an equal footing so as to eliminate any disadvantage the students may have in case of difference in the difficulty level of the questions in the exam.

In the past, there have been candidates with less than 90 percentile who have got a call from various IIMs.

Let’s take the example of IIM-Ahmedabad, that while shortlisting candidates for WAT and PI considers factors like – percentage in Class 10th; percentage in Class 12th with separate weightage for separate streams and percentage in the Bachelor’s Degree. Other IIMs also follow similar criteria or some additional factors like the discipline studied at the graduation level; gender diversity, etc.

So, all the aspirants, instead of worrying, focus on the task at hand and give it your best shot!