IIM Ahmedabad Admission 2018: CAT 2017 cut offs announced; needs 70 sectional percentile

CAT 2017 aspirants especially the non engineers stand a good chance to get into IIM Ahmedabad even with less than 90 percentile, shares the admission policy announced by the undisputed to B-school of India, IIM Ahmedabad for PGP 2018-20 batch.

IIM Ahmedabad can shortlist you for admission to PGP 2018-20 batch, even if you score as low as 70 percentile in each section and 80 percentile overall in CAT 2017. However, you are supposed to have an excellent academic record.
After release of CAT 2017 notification on July 30, IIM Ahmedabad has announced its admission policy for PGP 2018-20 batch. The Indian Institute of Ahmedabad has placed on record the shortlisting criteria which state that General category candidates will have to score a minimum 70 sectional percentile in each of the 3 sections and minimum 80 overall percentile in CAT 2017 to be eligible for first stage shortlisting by IIM Ahmedabad.

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IIM Ahmedabad presently awards Post Graduate Diploma (PGDM) after completion of two-year Post-graduate Programme in Management (PGP). The IIM Bill 2017 seeks to empower all the IIMs to award MBA degree instead of diploma. The bill has already been passed by Lok Sabha and is waiting for the nod of Rajya Sabha and is expected to be made an Act after it is passed by Rajya Sabha also in the monsoon session 2017 of the parliament.

The two years PGP of IIM Ahmedabad is a full-time residential course for graduates from all disciplines wishing to choose a career in management. This Programme was ranked at No.16th in the world by the Financial Times Masters in Management category in the year 2014
The selection of the candidates for admission to the 2018-20 batch of the PGP at IIMA is a two-step process. In the first step, candidates are short-listed for Academic Writing Test (AWT) and Personal Interview (PI) from among the candidates who have a valid CAT-2017 score and have applied to the programme while filling up their CAT 2017 registration and application form. The applicants should also satisfy the eligibility criteria for the programme. The next part of admission process is the PI round after which final admission offer is made.

Low CAT 2017 percentile required by IIMA
The first stage shortlisting based on CAT 2017 scores for admission to PGP 2018-20 batch at IIM Ahmedabad will now require only a minimum 80 percentile overall as against 90 in other IIMs and only 70 in each of the 3 sections as against 80-85 required by other IIMs.

Last year also, IIM Ahmedabad reduced the minimum qualifying percentile from 90 to 80 overall.
Required CAT 2017 percentile at IIMA
IIM Ahmedabad has slashed the minimum qualifying CAT 2017 percentile for all categories of candidates. According to IIMA Admission Policy for PGP 2018-20 batch, In CAT-2017 there will be three sections, viz., Quantitative Aptitude (QA), Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning (DILR) and Verbal and Reading Comprehension (VRC). Only the candidates above the following minimum cut-offs in the sectional percentile ranks, the overall percentile rank and obtaining a positive (greater than zero) raw score in all sections of CAT-2017 will be considered for all the subsequent stages.

Your CAT 2017 score should have minimum following sectional and overall percentile to be eligible to get shortlisted by IIM Ahmedabad

Category
Percentile Rank in Verbal & Reading Comprehension (PVRC)
Percentile rank in Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning (PDILR)
Percentile Rank in Quantitative Aptitude(PQA)

Overall Percentile Rank
General
70
70
70
80

NC-OBC cum transgender
65
65
65
75

SC
60
60
60
70

ST
50
50
50
60

PWD
60
60
60
70

Key changes in IIM Ahmedabad Admission criteria
Following are the favourable changes and important points in the IIM Ahmedabad admission criteria for PGP 2018-20:

Minimum qualifying CAT 2017 overall percentile is 80
Minimum qualifying CAT 2017 sectional percentile in each of the 3 sections is 70
Above 90% marks in Class 10 will get you to top rating of 10 (Rating score A) irrespective of your stream
Top rating of 10 (Rating score B) for Class 12 will vary. To get highest weightage for your class 12 marks, you need above 90% marks in Science and Commerce stream. If you are a student of Arts stream, your 85% plus marks will get you highest rating score of 10.

For Bachelors degree weightage, the top rating of 10 (Rating score C) varies for different streams. The academic streams are categorised from AC-1 to AC-7. The medicine branch is defined as AC-1 and needs more than 70% marks to get highest rating of 10.
AC-2 at bachelors degree means CA, ICWA, CS degrees and needs 63% plus marks to get a rating of 10.
AC-3 and AC-5 denote degree in Economics, Finance, Commerce, Science, BBA, BCA, paramedical and need above 80% marks to get highest rating score of 10.
AC-4 & AC-7 denoting Engineering, technology, and other bachelor degrees need highest percentage of marks of 85% plus to get highest weightage of rating score 10 in IIM Ahmedabad shortlisting after CAT 2017 percentile.
AC-6 denotes Arts, Humanities, Law, Journalism and needs more than 75% marks to get the highest rating score 10 in shortlisting criteria at IIM Ahmedabad.
The Application Rating Score will be: AR= {A(class 10) +B(Class 12) +C(Bachelors degree). Accordingly, the normalised AR score of an applicant is equal to their AR score divided by average of the top 50 AR scores from the applicants pool. The applicants pool means the candidates who appear for CAT-2017 and apply to IIM Ahmedabad.

Actual cut-offs are higher
Above is only the minimum qualifying percentile score in CAT 2017 without which IIM Ahmedabad will not consider the candidates for 1st stage shortlist. For example, if a General category candidate scores 99 percentile in 2 sections and scores 60 percentile in 3rd section, his overall percentile may be as high as 95 or 96 but since he has not cleared the threshold limit of qualifying percentile in one section, he will not be shortlisted by IIM Ahmedabad. In case some other IIM prescribes minimum sectional qualifying percentile as 60, he may be shortlisted by the concerned IIM.
According to IIM Ahmedabad, Performance in CAT is an important input in the admission process. Candidates should note that it is important to perform well in each section of the test. In addition to the performance in CAT, IIMA uses academic performance of the candidates throughout their academic career up to the bachelors level for shortlisting for AWT & PI.

AR scores at all stages of shortlisting
At different stages of the selection process Application Rating (AR) score of an applicant will be used. An applicants AR score is the sum of all the rating scores based on their percentage of marks obtained in the 10th standard, the 12th standard (depending upon the stream, viz., Science, Commerce and Arts & Humanities) and the bachelors degree programme (depending upon the discipline) respectively.
For different streams/disciplines the equivalent ARs are arrived at by using a (sort of) percentile equivalence of the score distributions using previous years CAT data.
After the stage 1 shortlisting the successful CAT 2017 takers shall have to go through the final admission process at IIM Ahmedabad. The final admission round will comprise Academic Writing Test (AWT) and Personal Interview (PI). Both the tests will be conducted on the same day and the admission offers shall be issued based on the scores obtained in CAT 2017, AWT, PI and other key parameters in the month of April, 2018.
Many candidates with 99 and 100 percentile in CAT were not offered admission by IIM Ahmedabad in PGP 2017-19 batch. On the other hand candidates like Vidit Garg with CAT percentile 89.67 percentile have got admission in IIM Ahmedabad this year in PGP programme.

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