Apparently, 89.67 percentile is not the lowest entry that got into IIM Ahmedabad’s PG programme this year. Dr. Apratim Guha Associate Professor, Production & Quantitative Methods Area with IIM-A confirmed the news about Vidit Garg gaining entry into IIM-A after scoring a 89.67 percentile.
“It is indeed true that one candidate from general category with 89.67 CAT percentile has been shortlisted this year; in fact, this is not the lowest CAT percentile among the shortlisted general category candidates this year.” Prof Guha added that even last year IIM-A admitted some candidates from the general category with similar CAT percentile.
Explaining the process further, Dr Guha said that IIM Ahmedabad selects students for its PGP based on a diverse set of attributes which includes performance in CAT, performance in AWT & PI, academic performance, co-curricular and extra-curricular achievements, work experience etc. “People with relatively lower CAT percentile can still get selected if they perform exceptionally in terms of the other attributes.”
Some sense can be made from IIM-A’s shortlisting procedure.
PaGaLGuY Take: This move brings pleasant tidings for the MBA scene in India. There was a time when the top IIMs like IIM Ahmedabad relied heavily on the CAT score to admit student. This automatically meant a whole bunch of engineers and artificial diversity. So, all other efforts to get in aspirants from ‘different’ backgrounds often remained just a paper exercise. If IIM-A is on record to say that they do take in students with a CAT scores as less as 89.67 percentile, it shows the commitment to genuinely diversify the class and give importance to those who dare to do different things and also attempt an MBA.