Quant section in CAT 2015 may not be so dominating as it used to be in earlier CAT exams for the reason that IIMs wish to increase academic diversity in their class rooms. The students very well placed in Quant shall have to prepare hard also for Logical Reasoning and Verbal Ability to score high percentile and if they wish to be shortlisted by the IIMs now.
The domination of quant in Common Admission Test (CAT) due to the high weightage awarded to it in calculation of percentile has resulted in higher selection ratio of a particular class of candidates. Sharing with MBAUniverse.com on the issue how to overcome the problem in CAT 2015 and increase academic diversity in IIM class rooms Prof Tathagata Bandyopadhyay, Convener CAT 2015 and faculty at IIM Ahmedabad says “Regarding the content part, one of our concerns is, score in Quant dominates the percentile rank in CAT. As a consequence it brings in skewness to the selection process towards a particular set of candidates from a particular background.”
The proposed strategy in CAT 2015 is to limit the dominance of more engineering graduates making it to IIMs and hence one of the measured going to be taken by the CAT 2015 convening IIM Ahmedabad to increase academic diversity in IIM class rooms is to reduce weightage of Quantitative Ability section. According to Prof Bandyopadhyay “By rationalizing weights assigned to different components of the test we hope to create a level-playing field for all candidates, no matter what educational background they come from, and will remove skewness to a large extent”
While high percentile in each of the 2 sections will be required to get shortlisted by IIMs for PGP batch 2016-18, the formula to reduce the weightage on Quant section is under process.
All the 13 and now 19 Indian institutes of Management (IIMs) have a high number of engineering graduates. An evidence to this fact is the class profile of IIMs as 80 to 85% students in IIMs are from Engineering back ground and less than 20% are the from other academic back ground including the girl candidates in the class. To bring greater academic diversity more changes are proposed in awarding the weightage to 4 parts clubbed to 2 sections in CAT 2015.
IIMs despite their strategic efforts have not been able to increase the ratio of non engineering background students in their class rooms. It has been a major cause of worry for all the IIMs.
IIMs have been adopting ways and means to reduce this dominance by awarding weightage to candidates from non-engineering back ground as well as to female candidates in final admission round, but still the higher number of engineers are getting into IIMs mainly for the reason that the candidates from other than engineering back ground are unable to score high in Quantitative Ability section in CAT and as such are unable to make it to final admission round at IIMs.
Common Admission Test (CAT) exam is divided in 2 sections namely Quantitative Ability & Data Interpretation as the section-1 and Verbal Ability & logical reasoning as section-2.
Admission policy of IIMs require high sectional percentile in both the sections in a range from 85 to 99+. A candidate scoring high percentile of 99+ in Verbal Ability section and scoring 75+ in Quant section, despite scoring a very high overall percentile of 95-96 cannot expect to be shortlisted by IIM A,B,C,L or even by the newer IIMs as the sectional percentile is below the prescribed cut off level. To overcome this problem some changes are proposed to be introduced in CAT 2015 to reduce percentile rank domination of Quantitative ability section.
It may be for the first time that innovative changes in the computer based CAT 2015 are going to be brought about to provide equal opportunity of scoring high to the test takers irrespective of their academic background.
Related Article
CAT 2015: Get ready to face tricky Questions on genders & Plurals; know the strategy to score high
CAT 2015: Single day test offers no flexibility; make your preparation plan accordingly
CAT 2015: Quant no more to dominate the percentile rank; says convener Prof T Bandyopadhyay
CAT 2015: Proposed changes at operational and content level; ensure well devised preparation line
Stay tuned to MBAUniverse.com for more updates on CAT 2015
