Capturing CAT 2018: Cut-Offs which cut you off!

 Sectional Cut-Offs (Myth Vs Reality)

There was a time when the sectional cut-offs in CAT used to be very high; IIM Ahmedabad used to expect aspirants (General category) for PGP to score NOT less than 96-97%ile in each of the sections. The aspirants used to fret about their weakest section.

What now?

There is NO IIM which expects you to get more than 85 %ile in any of the sections in any of the categories! For most of the IIMs this is only 80%ile.

Let’s look at what an 85 %ile score meant for each of the sections of CAT 2017:

So, it is your prime responsibility to get this much at least.

You require this much to be eligible for selection. If you have this much in each of the sections, then ONLY your overall percentile will play a role further. The percentile requirements for your overall score released by the IIMs is only the eligibility criteria. When it comes to the actual requirement for overall score, it goes much higher for Engineering and Commerce students mostly. Please bear in mind that many IIMs have different approaches towards selecting students from different academic backgrounds.

It is NOT rare for a student from Humanities background to get a call for Personal Appearance (PA) from IIM Ahmedabad at an overall percentile of 89-90 (yes, in General category for the flagship PGP)!

I had a student (in General category) who not only got shortlisted for Personal Appearance (PGP) at IIM Ahmedabad at 89.67 %ile, but also got the final admission offer. He is now in the 2^nd year of PGP (IIM A). There are students (General category) in his batch who got into PGP of IIM A at even a lower percentile. There are General category students studying in IIM Bangalore who had scored just around 90%ile in CAT!

Then there is an extreme: CAT percentile requirements for engineers in General category!

The sectional CAT Cut-Offs are not different for this category apparently. The problem is the ever-surging overall CAT percentile requirements, especially at the IIMs A, B and C.

I had a student (General category) from NIT Delhi with 99.56 %ile in CAT 2016 (Engineering: 8.14 CGPA, more than 90% in each of 10^th and 12^th), who did NOT get even a Personal Appearance call from any of the IIMs A, B, C and L!

Please try to understand these statistics:

I have ignored certain Online Classroom Program fine calculations here!

Other things remaining constant, I think the chances of a male engineer (in General category) who is NOT in the top 750-800 getting considered for even the Personal Appearance round at any of the IIMs A, B or C are poor.

Please do NOT forget that these 3 IIMs put together have close to 600 seats for General category students. Of these 600 seats, only around 450 usually go to engineers (batch profiling, etc.). For these 450 seats, around 1350 calls are issued by the top 3 IIMs for the Personal Appearance. So, practically a male engineer in General category has to score at least 99.60-99.70 percentile in order to have a realistic chance of getting a Personal Appearance (PA) call from the IIMs A, B and C.

Let’s look again at what an 85 %ile score meant for each of the sections of CAT 2017:

The sum of these 3 is 38, and one needed to get 26-27 more answers correct in order to score around 99.60-99.70 percentile. After scoring this much, you would not suffer much because of your CAT score. My assumption is that the difficulty levels of all the sections in CAT 2018 will be at par with those of CAT 2017. So, let’s play out 3 different situations:

 1. Your VARC is poor

If you get these many correct in these sections, you stand a great chance of scoring 99.60-99.70 percentile:

So, if your VARC is poor and you just manage to clear the cut-off in it, you will have to do EXTREMELY well in each of the remaining 2 sections to get to the level of 99.60-99.70 percentile.

2. Your DILR is poor

If you get these many correct in these sections, you stand a great chance of scoring 99.60-99.70 percentile:

3. Your QA is poor

In order to manage even 99.50 percentile, you will have to get these many correct:

Thus, the reality is that if you just clear the cut-off in any of the sections, in the other 2 you will have to manage something very uphill. If you just clear the cut-off in 2 of the sections then your IIM journey gets over irrespective of how much you score in the 3^rd section.

So, you need to be a performer in each of the sections to have a realistic chance. The worst category for getting shortlisted is a male engineer in General category. Well, but this “worst category” constitutes around 30% of PGP batch in most of the IIMs! Almost every year I hear a hue and cry about engineers (in General category) not getting even a Personal Appearance call from the top IIMs despite getting 99.5%ile in CAT. 

Let’s compare the respective figures with other competitions:

• At the UG level, there is a competition called CLAT for getting into the NLUs (National Law Universities). The top NLU is NLSIU, Bengaluru.
• The required percentile to get into NLSIU, Bengaluru was around 99.88 (55/45000) on the basis of CLAT 2018 scores. This is NOT discussed much as CLAT does NOT release percentile scores, they just release a rank list. The scene is NOT very different in case of GATE!

As we have seen, if you are given your absolute rank instead of the percentile one, a healthy looking 99.5 %ile would be Rank 1000 (bad)!

So, in most of the cases, a good-looking percentile score is just a euphemism!

The most wonderful thing about percentile scores is that they can NEVER be in NEGATIVE!

The gist of the story is that a male engineer in General category must target (and get) at least 99.70 percentile in CAT 2018.

Prep hard, prep smart!

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