IIM CAP 2016: Begins on Feb 15 as a more smooth process, says Dr Gautam Sinha Director, CAP coordinating IIM Kashipur

The Common Admission Process (CAP) 2016 being coordinated by IIM Kashipur is going to start on February 15, 2016 and will be a different and more aspirant friendly experience for the candidates seeking admission in 9 participating IIMs.
Sharing exclusively with MBAUniverse.com, Dr Gautam Sinha Director IIM Kashipur the CAP 2016 coordinating IIM has confirmed Among the five different centers (New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai), the CAP will start on February 15th and end on March 4th.

Common Admission Process 2016 is the WAT and PI round for the shortlisted candidates of 9 IIMs namely IIM Kashipur/IIM Raipur/IIM Ranchi/IIM Rohtak/ IIM Tiruchirappalli/IIM Udaipur/IIM BodhGaya/IIM Sambalpur/IIM Amritsar. Earlier there used to be 6 IIMs who used to participate in CAP round but 3 more IIMs have been added to CAP round in 2016.

CAP 2016 will consist of Written Ability Test (WAT) of short duration say 20 to 30 minutes followed by Personal Interview (PI). After the CAP round IIM Kashipur will prepare the merit list based on CAP 2016 scores and will provided it to the participating IIMs who will further make the final admission offers according to their admission criteria.

CAP 2016: More smooth than earlier
Usually candidates are apprehensive of getting a tough time during CAP round. But IIM Kashipur proposes to turn it into a different and stress free experience by making it more smooth. Sharing with MBAUniverse.com, Dr Gautam Sinha, Director IIM Kashipur says We have taken extra care to make the process as smooth as possible for the candidates and the participating institutes. We understand that this is a stressful time for the candidates, and our goal is to provide them with a structured environment in this round of the selection process.

CAP 2016: Benchmark for future with best practices
Before proceeding to coordinate CAP 2016, IIM Kashipur has made all out efforts to further incorporate the best policies and procedures in the Common Admission Process 2016. Proposing the CAP 2016 as a benchmark for future, Dr Gautam Sinha, Director IIM Kashipur said We have also incorporated the collective wisdom shared by other IIMs previously managing the CAP. In order to facilitate a uniform interview process, we also conducted an interview workshop where faculty members from the IIMs participating in the CAP discussed policies and procedures to be followed during the interview sessions. Our hope is that this time we will incorporate the best practices in the process which will work as the benchmarks in the future.

CAP 2016: Complexity turned into clarity
With 9 IIMs instead of 6, going to participate in CAP 2016 and the 3 of them absolutely new and still under mentorship of other old IIMs, the complexity in coordinating the Common Admission Process has further intensified. Besides, the 3 new IIMs have not yet announced their shortlist of candidates for CAP round.

In order to synchronise the process for all, extra care has been taken by IIM Kashipur. According to Dr Gautam Sinha, This time we are handling logistically a more complex job. Since multiple IIMs are managing a couple of centers, we had to take extra care to synchronize all the participating IIMs. Since we have three new mentee-IIMs joining ( Amritsar, Bodhgaya, Sambalpur) us this time, certain aspects of the CAP had to be worked out to accommodate everyone. Since we have some new entrants this time, we also took extra care to bring everyone on the same platform.

It may be noted that out of 12 new and the newest IIMs, 9 will offer admission on the basis of scores obtained in CAP round and their respective admission criteria. Among the rest 3 IIMs, while IIM Sirmaur will not go for any GD-PI-WAT process to prepare final merit list for PGP 2016-18 admission, the admission policy for IIM Nagpur and IIM Visakhapatnam is yet to be announced. It appears that the PI & WAT scores of the eligible candidates for the remaining 2 new IIMs viz IIM Nagpur and IIM Visakhapatnam will be directly made available by their mentor IIMs i.e. IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Bangalore respectively.

Except IIM Rohtak, all other IIMs namely IIM Kashipur, IIM Ranchi, IIM Raipur, IIM Trichy, IIM Udaipur have same shortlisting criteria based solely on CAT 2015 scores. Out of 6 newest IIMs, IIM BodhGaya and IIM Sirmaur have announced their shortlisting criteria while IIM Amritsar, IIM Nagpur, IIM Sambalpur, IIM Visakhapatnam are yet to announce their admission policy for PGP 2016-18 batch. With the announcement of 3 more IIMs participating in CAP 2016, it appears that same admission policy has been adopted by these 3 newest IIMs.