Proficiency in all sections a must to crack code

KOLKATA/MUMBAI: Talk about pips. The IIMs beat the forex sector hollow. Out of the 2.3 lakh students who took the CAT head-on, a precise 0.0039% bagged a 100 percentile.

In absolute terms, just nine candidates — Sankalp Mittal, Sayan Sarkar, K Ravi, Vineet Saini, Ranjai Banerji, Gourav Gautam Bhattacharya, Arjun Khurana, Ankit Anand and Rahul Jalan — stood clear in the field. And even among them, one was rejected for GD/PI at IIM Calcutta because he did not meet the sectional cut-off in one of the three sections!

Effectively, what do these figures imply? It means that being among the top nine in a field that is 25,555 times larger is not good enough to guarantee you a call, let alone a place under the sun, at one of our hallowed IIMs. Incidentally, last year, too, 100 percentilers were also just 9, although the field was smaller at about 1.91 lakh.

“To be a good manager, one has to be proficient in all aspects. Which is why, we give equal weightage to all three sections, and have individual cut-offs for each. We abide by that, and make no exceptions, even for those who have scored a 100 percentile,” Prof Asish K Bhattacharyya, spokesperson, the CAT group and chairperson (admissions), IIM, Calcutta (IIM-C) told ET.