Addition of 7 Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) to the family of existing 13 IIMs will offer the best opportunity for CAT 2015 aspirants to get into their dream B school in 2016. Not only this, the intake in these IIMs is also proposed to be increased from the academic session 2016-17. CAT 2015 could prove to be the best bet for those who wish to get admission in an IIM in 2016. Number of freshers who were in their final year of graduation when CAT 2014 was held have got admission to one of the IIMs and with the launching of 6 new IIMs in 2015 more CAT 2014 takers have received the admission offer while the admission process to a few of the new IIMs is still on.
20 IIMs in 2016 with 5800 intake
At present the total intake in all the 19 IIMs (13 existing and 6 commencing operation in 2015) is around 4500 students to their flagship programmes. In 2016 this intake is expected to increase to 5800 students scoring high sectional and overall percentile in CAT 2015.
In fact, due to paucity of space at the campus for the first batch, these new IIMs have not been able to offer admission to the full sanctioned intake capacity and this glitch is expected to be overcome in the academic session 2016-17. Apart from this the existing 13 IIMs are also expected to have an increased intake in 2016.
The top rated and older 7 IIMs namely IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta, Lucknow, Kozhikode, Indore, Shillong have an intake of around 3300 students per year, it is expected to increase to 4000 in 2016, if everything goes right.
Another set of 6 IIMs launched in 2010-11 which includes IIM Kashipur, Raipur, Ranchi, Rohtak, Tiruchirappalli and Udaipur is also expected to increase its intake in 2016 from 800+ students to 1000+ students.
The Budget 2014-15 brought with it 6 new IIMs in the states of Andhra Pradesh (IIM Visakhapatnam); Maharashtra (IIM Nagpur); Himachal Pradesh (IIM Sirmaur); Punjab (IIM Amritsar); Bihar (IIM Bodh Gaya) and Odisha (IIM Sambalpur) making the total tally of IIMs to 19. The 20th IIM is proposed to be set up in the state of Jammu & Kashmir and would commence operation in 2016.
The sanctioned intake for the 6 new IIMs that are going to launch their first batch in 2015 is 140 students each but none of them has been able to offer admission to 140 students due to infrastructural constraints and the intake capacity has remained limited to 60—70 students in each of them, making it a total strength of not more than 400 students for 2015. It is expected that in 2016 all these 6 IIMs will be able to offer admission to 140 students each increasing their intake capacity to 800+ students. The 7th IIM at J&K may have the intake of 60 students in 2016.
IIMs to shortlist 50000 CAT 2015 higth scorers
IIMs shortlist the candidates on the basis of CAT scores in the ratio of 8 to 10 times of intake for 2nd phase of admission round. In case the intake in 2016 is increased to 5700 to 5800 students in all the 20 IIMs taken together, it is very much possible that more than 50000 MBA aspirants who appear in CAT 2015 may find their names among the shortlisted candidates by IIMs.
It is expected that CAT 2015 registration may cross 200000 aspirants. If 25% of them are shortlisted by IIMs, the shortlisting ratio of 1:4 is a good proposition to explore admission opportunity in an IIM or an equivalent B school
Advisory: Target high sectional & overall scores
According to Prof S K Agarwal, expert on Verbal Ability and mentor CAT 2015 preparation, while the rosy picture is sure there for CAT 2015 aspirants, they will have to remember that IIMs need high and balanced sectional percentile apart from overall percentile.
With the publication of CAT 2015 notification and with the beginning of its registration process, all the IIMs also announce their admission criteria. They make it clear that despite scoring high overall percentile, if a candidate does not score high sectional percentile in CAT, he/she may not be shortlisted for next phase of admission round.
Your preparation for CAT 2015 must therefore be balanced and should target a high score in each of the 2 sections. If you score high sectional percentile, you will spontaneously be able to get high overall percentile. While the newer IIMs peg the minimum required sectional percentile between 80 to 90 and overall percentile beyond 96 in CAT exam, the actual cut off in the newer IIMs goes much higher.
You will have to work hard and attempt CAT 2015 with focused preparation if you wish to get into IIM A, B, C, L, I, K as their minimum required sectional percentile is 95+ and overall around 99.
Please also remember IIMs do not require any candidate with superfluous knowledge and CAT 2015 is going to be a reflection of this fact. IIMs need such candidates who can develop good managerial skills, the ones who have clarity of thought and can write well, can convey the message in their writing piece with no ambiguity. With use of simple and clear vocabulary words they should be able to speak out what they want to say. Hence the IIMs need a person with good knowledge and intelligence who is smart enough to project himself/herself instead of a Shakespeare who may be good to become a professor of English but not a good manager.
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