IIM-B reveals admission criteria for the first time

New Delhi, July 29: For the first time, the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB), has made public the criteria it used for selecting students for the 2007 batch of its flagship two-year post- graduate programme (PGP) in management, revealing in the process that a candidate's score in the tough Common Admission Test (CAT) has only a 20 per cent weightage in the final reckoning.

In what will come as a major surprise for most IIM aspirants, the document said that once an applicant has been shortlisted for the group discussion and personal interview (GDPI), his score in CAT, considered to be one of the most difficult entrance examinations anywhere, has just a 20 per cent weightage in the final aggregate score, on the basis of which admission offers are made.

In fact, the candidate's Class X and Class XII results together have a higher weightage at 25 per cent. The results of the Bachelor's degree examination account for another 15 per cent.

"IIMB emphasizes consistent and high performance in past academics," the document said.

This is the first time that any of the prestigious IIMs located at Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Lucknow, Kozhikode and Indore, has revealed the selection process for admission to the PGP. Broad indications about the admission criteria are given in the CAT bulletin every year, but the detailed procedure followed and the weightage given to different parameters by the six institutes have never been made public before.

The disclosure is the result of an application filed by Vaishnavi Kasturi, a visually challenged girl, with the Central Information Commission (CIC) under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Vaishnavi had been denied a seat in IIMB and had sought to know, through the application to the CIC, details of the selection process.

About two lakh applicants appear every year for the CAT , which is the first step in the process for admission to one of the six IIMs.

The seventh IIM, coming up at Shillong, is likely to start functioning from the next academic year.

The IIMB has made it clear that the document made public by it only details the process adopted for selecting candidates for admission to its PGP for the batch of 2007.

"The process that would be used for admissions in 2008 by IIMB will be made available on the IIMB website before CAT 2007 (to be conducted in November this year). It is expected that the process followed will be roughly similar," it said.

While the IIMs hold a Common Admission Test, each of them separately shortlists candidates for the second stage of selection, the GDPI, and announces the final admission lists independent of each other. This means that several candidates may end up being short-listed for GDPI and selected for admission by more than one IIM. The few lucky ones get chosen by all six.

According to the document, IIMB has internally developed an admission process that seeks to identify the most promising candidates for the PGP programme.

"This process has been progressively refined over the years based on its cumulative data on CAT applicants and on the academic performance of the candidates that were admitted at IIMB. The process arrived at is based on the relationship of academic performance in IIMB to past academic performance, CAT score, performance in group discussion, interview and prior work experience. The selection criteria and weights given to various parameters are based on data from previous cycles as well as on inputs from the IIMB faculty body and other relevant stakeholders and are usually revised every year. The admission committee fixes these criteria and weights at the beginning of each admission cycle before looking at information pertaining to candidates applying in that cycle so as to avoid any bias," it said.

IIMB said it had found over the years that students who performed well in its PGP programme were typically those who had a consistently good academic record during their school, high school and graduation level, besides exhibiting sufficiently high aptitude as measured by the CAT. "Therefore, IIMB uses multiple parameters, namely academic performance in school, high school and graduation programmes as well as candidates' scores in Common Admission Test (CAT) to judge the suitability of candidates for the PGP programme," it said.

"Relevant work experience, if any, is also given weight in the selection. Evaluation by multiple criteria is also consistent with empirical research on recruitment and selection that shows greater efficacy of recruitment processes that use multiple criteria," the document said.

According to the institute, the CAT score, over and above being a selection criterion, is also used to establish the minimum level of proficiency that is expected from the candidate in respective faculties as indicated by section wise minimum scores in the CAT.

Multiple criteria are used to arrive at a composite score for every candidate, which is used to select candidates for the subsequent stage, it said.

IIMB said that the first phase process was applied to all eligible candidates who appeared for CAT to determine the list of those who would be called for GDPI.

During the GDPI process, two faculty members evaluated each qualifying candidate on his/her performance in the group discussion, his/her summary of the group discussion and his/her performance during the personal interview.

In addition, for candidates having work experience, each interviewing faculty evaluated the quality and relevance of the candidate's work experience.

These scores, in combination with the pre-GDPI selection parameters were used cumulatively in the second and final phase of selection to identify the candidates who merit selection from among those candidates who appear for the GDPI.

The shortlist for GDPI was based on candidates securing minimum section-wise and aggregate percentile scores in CAT.

"All the subsequent processing, standardisation and selection was limited to candidates belonging to this first short list. This means that the CAT score alone was used as the basis for arriving at the first short list. However, these section-wise and aggregate level cut-offs were not decided in advance - they were based on the overall performance of all candidates in that year's CAT and was adjusted to ensure that a sufficiently large pool of applicants were available in each category for subsequent processing by applying other selection criteria on these candidates," it said.

According to the document, the minimum percentile requirement for a candidate from the general category to make it to the first shortlist was 85 in each of the three sections of CAT (logic and data, verbal and quantitative) and 90 in the aggregate.

The requirements were 50 percentile in logic and data, 55 in verbal and 50 in quantitative and 65 overall for scheduled tribe candidates.

In the case of scheduled caste and physically disabled candidates, these numbers were 50, 55, 50 and 75.

For all candidates in the first shortlist, the candidates' percentage scores in the 10th and 12th board exams are standardised by dividing each score by the 90th percentile score obtained in that board.

The database of 10th and 12th scores of all CAT applicants of the past two years was used for identifying the 90th percentile score for each 10th and 12th board for this purpose.

For all candidates in the first shortlist, final scores obtained by the candidate were used for the bachelor's degree and professional degrees (if any). Incomplete or intermediate scores were considered only if the candidate's final score was pending. Thus, for final year bachelor's degree candidates, their incomplete graduation score would be taken in lieu of final graduation score.

Graduation scores were standardised within their respective categories. This provided the standardised score for the bachelor's degree for all candidates in the first shortlist.

For all candidates in the first shortlist, those who had done Chartered Accountancy were eligible for weight under professional course. No other course was eligible for weight under this parameter.

Some weightage was also given for work experience. The score peaked at 36 months of work experience and fell to zero at 144 months, which means that candidates with work experience of moderate duration got more weightage than those with much longer years.

For all candidates, the maximum of the work experience score and the professional course score was considered under a common weight of 10, since both provide professional work experience relevant to a management programme.

"For all candidates in the first shortlist, other than work experience or professional course, the weights for the remaining four components (each of them being standardised) were fixed as: CAT = 20, 10th board=15, 12th board=10, Bachelors= 15," the document said.

"The weighted total of the five components namely (a) work experience or professional course, (b) CAT, (c) 10th board, (d) 12th board, (e) bachelor's was used to prepare a pre-GDPI rank list for calling candidates for the GDPI. Sufficient candidates were invited for GDPI to enable selection based on the additional GDPI evaluation components (a) GD, (b) GD summary, (c) Personal interview, (d) review of work experience (if any)," it said.

IIMB said the top ten candidates in each section and total score in CAT, adjusted SSC, HSC, Bachelors and professional (CA) (from the first shortlist) automatically qualified for GDPI.

"These candidates were given a chance to appear for GDPI due to their exceptional performance on one parameter. However, at the end of Phase 2, all such candidates had to merit selection at an identical level of composite aggregate score like any other candidate," it explained.

The document said that in Phase 2 of the selection process, for each of the three elements of evaluation during the GDPI----Group Discussion, Group Discussion Summary and Personal Interview---the average of the scores given by the two interviewing faculty was considered. The overall performance of each candidate in the Group Discussion was scored by each faculty individually. Similarly the quality of the Group Discussion Summary was scored by each faculty individually. Each faculty used the Personal Interview to comprehensively evaluate the candidate's motivation and ability to fit in and benefit from the PGP programme.

All candidates were also required to provide three confidential reference letters from their employers or faculty and these were also used in the personal interview evaluation.

The work experience score was multiplied by the quality of experience score, as evaluated by the interviewing panel as an assessment of the relevance of the work experience to the programme.

The quality of work experience score was evaluated on a 5 point scale by each member of the panel during the interviews.

The Group Discussion score (weight=7.5), Group Discussion Summary score (weight=7.5) and the Personal Interview score (weight=20)were added to the pre-GDPI total, to arrive at the final aggregate score, the document said.

"The final offers of admission to candidates were made on the basis of ranks in each category on the final aggregate score," it said.

"Since IIMB follows a comprehensive multi-criteria process at the pre-GDPI stage, it is able to identify many candidates for the GDPI who have an excellent academic record and work experience but who, while doing well enough in the CAT to be in the first shortlist, may have narrowly missed the high score that would have been required if CAT alone was the basis for the GDPI short list," it said.

"Such candidates effectively replace candidates who have only a high CAT score but score poorly in terms of their past academic record and work experience. IIMB emphasizes consistent and high performance in past academics," it said.

About three or four students join the PGP programme each year through the GMAT route, in which also a similar shortlisting process is adopted. The GMAT route is applicable only to candidates who have resided abroad for at least 18 months in the preceding three years and were not in a position to appear for the CAT, the document added.

UNI