IIM Selection Criteria- The Ultimate guide

When we prepare for the Common Admission Test (CAT) exam or want to do MBA we often stay in a dilemma whether  we will get admission at IIM or not (which is again very common). IIMs are considered as the most premium colleges in India for pursuing a management  degree. There are a total of 20 IIMs, comprising a mix of old IIMs, few baby IIMs and some are new IIMs.

So in this article, we will discuss the stages a particular candidate goes through  who gets admission to IIMs.

If you want a well-paid package then for that, you need to cross a few stages. The very first stage is getting shortlisted by the IIMs. Getting shortlisted simply means that if any of the IIMs has 200 seats then at least 600 people minimum 3 times people will be called for an interview.

So, the selection process will be totally based on something called the composite score. Now this composite score will depend on many factors. Factors like your 10th marks, your 12th marks, graduation, post-graduation, work experience, CAT exam percentile points/marks. In the same way you get extra points if you have an academic and gender diversity as well. For example, if you are a non-engineer then you might get marks (all colleges are not included) and if you are a female candidate then you get points for that as well. So there are many types of points available.

But it is also not necessary that each and every IIM or every B school will give you points for everything. There are some IIMs that don’t consider your IIM marks .There are some B schools that consider post-graduation marks also. So it depends entirely on their eligibility criteria. But the important point is composite score the mixture of all the things that will decide which candidate will get shortlisted.

The lesson drawn from this is the only thing controllable to you is how well you perform in the CAT exam and how much work experience can you get it before the CAT exam. Try to maintain your academic marks as you can’t alter your academic marks later on. The only thing you can do is get more work experience so that you will get that work experience points for some IIMs but most importantly you should focus on your CAT exam because of which you will get shortlisted. It is also observed that while calculating the composite score nowhere your internship, achievements ,courses are mentioned. Only your academic performance, work experience, and CAT exam matters during the selection. So if you want to get shortlist from any IIM these are the only things that you have to work for.

Also Read: The Reality of IIM Packages