The institute has decided to use CAT scores only for short-listing candidates for the personal interview. This move comes after an IMI research showed no direct relationship between a candidate’s CAT scores and his scholastic performance at IMI.
While sharing the modifications in the admission process with MBAUniverse.com, IMI Director Dr CS Venkata Ratnam said, “The major change that we have made this year is to drop CAT scores as weightages for final selection. We will use CAT scores as a short-listing tool only. We will now give more weightage to the previous scholastic record of a candidate.”
In another departure from the past admission process, IMI has done away with the group-discussion (GD) round (the GD round is usually held after the written round). Instead, a new format of ‘extempore speech’ will be used to check a student’s communication abilities. The admission coordinators will offer a specific topic for students to speak on, and this topic will be changed several times for different students groups.
IMI has also decided to award weightages to work experience of more than a year.
The ‘cut-off’ was set at 95.00 percentile and 93.75 percentile for the PGP and the PGPHRM courses respectively based on the candidates’ academic performance in the CAT examination.
As a result, according to IMI admission guidelines, out of a possible 100 marks, weights were assigned to 9 categories for candidate evaluation and final selection. It includes extempore speaking (10 marks), essay (10 marks), personal interview (40 marks), academic performance includes (Class X and Class XII) and graduation performance (10 marks in total), work experience (20 marks), academic pedigree (15 marks), extracurricular activities (5 marks).
Talking about the IMI research that led to these changes, Dr Venkata Ratnam said, “We have conducted a detailed study to find out a correlation between CAT scores and academic performance. We conducted these tests on data gathered on IMI students. We compared CAT scores with the grades that students got in their first year exams. Our internal research showed that CAT scores did not have a significant causal relationship with candidate performance… In our research we have found that students with excellent prior scholastic record have the tendency to do well in the MBA course as well.”
Now that the admission process is over, IMI officials are busy preparing the names of candidates who match up on the new benchmarks. According to Dr Venkata Ratnam, the institute is expected to announce its final admission list by early May.
