B-schools have begun announcing their admission lists even while a bunch of CAT 2013 candidates are fighting a legal battle in court.
The first school to declare its admission list (today) for the 2014-2016 batch was SP Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai. SP Jain officials informed that the entire list of 240 candidates for its two-years PGDM course was ready.
However, a rider to the admission letter sent to the candidates explicitly details the ongoing CAT scores battle and mentions that changes could take place if the outcome of the legal battle suggests so.
An official from SP Jain told PaGaLGuY that CAT is only a qualifying criteria and does not play any other role in the admission process so the legal process is bound to have little impact on its admissions. SP Jain’s cut-off for CAT was 85 per centile.
“Only if an admitted candidate who has scored over 85 percentile finds his or her percentile dropping to under 85 after the court judgement that his or her admission will be considered null and void,” added the official.
It is for this reason also that SPJMR also has a huge wait list of applicants who will move up in the order of their ranking in case anyone offered admission opts out or if the CAT court case takes on a serious turn.
It is expected that other institutes admitting through CAT scores will follow a similar schedule. Will be interesting to see how the IIMs handle the admissions though. While one court has ordered reservation for the petitioners, others have shown an intent clearly in favour of the protesting CAT candidates. In other words, institutes are expected to declare admission lists but with CAT riders put in which will make the admission lists senseless in the case of the IIMs.