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IIM Ahmedabad Selection Criteria for 2016-18 batch – Facts and Thoughts

Friday, August 7th, 2015

The admission criteria for IIM-Ahmedabad was released yesterday. You can download the detailed PDF. While it is quite similar to previous year’s criteria, there are some changes. The one that has disturbed most students is given in the image below:

IIM Ahmedabad Selection Rejection Criteria for 2016-18 batch

Table 6 in the image tells you the average marks that you need in class 10th and 12th to be considered for IIM-A.
So, if you were a general category science student and had 84% in 10th and 75% in 12th, you will be rejected.
A general category science students needs an average of 80% or above in 10th and 12th to be considered for IIM-A.

Table 7 in the image tells you the minimum marks that you need to score in graduation to be considered for IIM-A.
A general category engineer (AC-4 in the image), you need 78% or above in graduation to be considered for IIM-A.

For the rest, I would recommend that you download the detail document and find out where you stand.

The above are the facts and they are undisputed. If you are CAT 2015 aspirant, the sooner you go through the Kubler-Ross cycle of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance – they better it would be for you. Here are some things which might help.

You can’t do shit about it.

The college is free to set its own criteria. You might think it is unfair and unjust but you cannot do anything about it. So, post an angry facebook status. Forward a few whatapp messages about the draconian education system. Share articles related to this news (like this one) and provide the websites(like this one) with more hits, revenue, visibility. Do whatever you need to – but realize that whatever you do will not have any impact. So, start studying again. Start watching the videos.

IIM-A is not the only college

IIM-A is the best B-school in the country and one of the very best in the world. But it is not the only college. There are at least 25 great colleges in India that will provide you with an education that would propel your career. You still have a chance at the other 24. If you continue to waste time over this one thing – you might miss out an opportunity at the other 24 colleges as well. So, start studying again. Start watching the videos.

You would not have gotten into IIM-A

This is going to sound harsh but let’s face facts. The cutoff for IIM-A last year was 99.67 percentile. That means you need to be roughly in the top 600 candidates who attempt CAT 2015. Also, it is not that all 600 got a call. Quite a few of them did not. Do you really think you are capable of scoring a 99.67+? In your entire academic history, how many times have you scored a 99.67%ile? If in a batch of 500 students in college, you were rank 2 – you would have still missed the 99.67 percentile cutoff. So, be rational about it. Know your limitations. And well – if you are one of those candidates who could have scored more than 99.67%ile but now you still won’t get an admission into IIM-A, I feel sorry for you. But you are a tiny tiny minority of the people who are reading this. You are a tiny tiny minority of the people who will be trying their luck at CAT 2015. You are the tiny tiny minority for whom this decision is unfair. To you, I have to say, life is a bitch. To you, I have no other argument to offer. To you, I can only offer a suggestion – start studying again. Start watching the videos.

As to what my personal opinion about the entire thing is – I think it sounds unfair but it is a step in the right direction. I don’t think that an entrance exam (CAT / GMAT / IIT-JEE) should be the sole criteria for admission. It is a flawed model. We need a good solution to select the right candidates for the top colleges in India. Till we find out that “right solution”, we need to work with existing models and keep on tweaking them and measure the results. This is just one of those tweaks.

I hope this post puts things into perspective. I am very well aware that I have written some stuff that is not ideal and you might not agree with it. I would like to know what you think about it and you can use the comment section for the same. In case, you are not comfortable using the comment section and discussing it publicly – do send me an email on [email protected]

Cheers,