Post-CAT interview calls for IIMs up 15%

Given the increase in other backward class (OBC) seats across the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), the number of Common Admission Test 2008 (CAT) candidates to be called for interviews will go up by 10-15 per cent. IIMs had seen around 250,000 students take the CAT in November 2008.

Sai Kumar, director (CAT Course) at T.I.M.E., a leading CAT training institute, said the number of students to be called for group discussion and interviews for the IIMs will be around 5,000. “Cut-offs are likely to increase on account of the higher number of students taking CAT,” he added.

IIM Lucknow (IIM-L), for instance, will be inviting around 1,980 candidates this year as against 1,650 candidates last year. “The invites for interview and group discussion has increased given the implementation of OBC quota. This year, instead of mere CAT scores, we would also be looking at 10th, 12th and graduation scores, as well as experience of the candidates. Overall, the number of calls for interview could go up by 10-15 per cent,” said Saji Nair, chairperson (admissions) at IIM-L.

Apparently, candidates seem to have fared well in the test this year. “The number of students getting 100 per cent score this year is three times that of last year, so far. Besides, the cut-offs for OBCs are going to be lower,” noted Ajay Arora, director, T.I.M.E, Bangalore.

The good scores have, therefore, resulted in more number of calls for the candidates.

According to Nishant Sinha, a final year student of IIT Delhi , who scored 100 per cent in the CAT 2008 written examination, “I have got calls from all the IIMs, except IIM Shillong and am looking forward to the GD/PI. As for the written exam, equal weightage was given to maths and data interpretation. May be the idea is to get as many diverse students as possible.”

Abhishek Gupta, academic head for Career Launcher, South Delhi, says, “The scores have shot up this year due to the increased weight given to the verbal section. CAT seems to be going the GMAT way with heavy emphasis on testing the verbal ability of the candidates. Compared to last year, there should be a 10-15 per cent increase in the overall scores this year.”

Meanwhile, special care was taken by IIMs to filter auto-generated requests that had caused the CAT results website to crash due to heavy traffic.

“Instead of a single server, we are using three parallel servers for database. Moreover, we have developed a program called CAPTCHA that demands candidates to manually provide a specific password and thereby, filter the auto generated requests,” says Satish Deodhar, chairperson (admissions) at IIM, Ahmedabad.

The institute, which has kept a percentile cutoff this year of 98 as against 99.2 last year, will be inviting around 834 candidates for interview and group discussions.