By all means, you need to work hard to do well in your Combined Admission Test (CAT) to get into an Indian Institute of Management. But how well you do in CAT — after you have been shortlisted which means you have made it to at least the top 10% of all applicants — makes up only a fifth of your final score when it comes to securing an IIM admission.

In fact, it’s your Class X and Class XII results that account for more — 25% of the final score; your Bachelor’s degree 15%. The factor with the maximum weightage is your performance in group discussion (GD), GD summary and personal interview — 35%. The balance 5% depends on work experience and whether you have taken a “professional course”.

And if you thought a B.Tech from IIT gives you an extra advantage, sorry. Only a Chartered Accountancy course qualifies as a “professional course.”

When it comes to work experience, three years will get you the maximum score depending on the quality and relevance of your job, anything more than three years means a lower score: you get zero points if you have slogged for 12 years.

Such details have been revealed for the first time by the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore which conducted the CAT last year after it was forced by the Central Information Commission to do so last fortnight. This direction came after 22-year-old visually challenged woman Vaishnavi Kasturi, was first refused information by IIMB. The institute declined to give details until the CIC intervened.

... contd.