[Apurv]

At the Indian Institute of Management - Calcutta, academic capability is gauged only through the CAT, says the Dean of Programme Initiatives Prof Anup K Sinha. In an interview with PaGaLGuY.com, he speaks candidly about this year's CAT shock, the future of the IIMs and life at Joka.

With IIM C's international festival Intaglio 2005 in the backdrop, he also throws light on the growing problem of good faculty at the IIMs and how the coming in of international b-schools will affect the IIMs' brand value.

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[anandv]

Wish all IIMs had the same agenda!

On a serious note-

If a person is able to give comprehensive reasons for his bad acads, then he should be marginalized...Else in my personal opnion 45% student and 80% student have to be demarcated

For reasons like "No interest in the subject ", it may extract a bit of wrath from panelists!

The reason being IIMs expect MBAs to be "Jack of all trades" kind of people who can handle various skill-sets ranging from Systems to finance to recruitment of a company or startup!
Bad acads because of disliking of the subject might contradict with the above theory

[AbhishekP]

I think the Prof is sorely missing the point when it comes to bringing in objectivity in the IIM admissions procedure. As long as the IIMs continue their misguided so-called objectivity (it can't be called that - because for being objective one has to look at all aspects rather than performance in just one screening test like CAT), they will never be able to rival the top global institutions.

When he himself admits that there is huge demand for MBA in India, then why not address that demand instead of allowing it to be satisfied by overseas b-schools.

And on the subject of having to choose between people getting 99 and 98 percentile, I remember there was an interesting discussion in the Economic Times a couple of months back. It was said that what the CAT does is promote academicians who do well in the test, not future leaders.

In the end I guess it is the IIMs more than the students who are losing out on diverse quality of students. What matters is not whether you have scored 99.75 or 98.75 but what you bring to the b-school through your academics, work ex, ideals, motivations rather than just topping a unidimensional screening test.

[DesiGuru]

Absolutely not looking at acads is stupid... And though this dude is saying it, I doubt the claims... He might have worded it to mean you are not ruled out... One wrongly marked answer is around half a god damn percentile... So how the hell can work done over 4 years not be considered relevant enough over the CAT score...
Though I would still rate a 1% higher percentile superior to any acad difference with the lower percentile...

Also I believe the decision about people must be done upto 80-90% before the actual GD/PI...
Its the last 10+% plus a few positive and negative vetoes that take place in the GD/PI round...

K

[shrikanthk]

edited......

[Shreya22]

What kind of difficulties will an Online CAT system bring up?

[Alaric]

difficulty wont b much... just operations!!! :-)

[rpradeephere]

i perfectly agree with Abhishekp. It makes absolutely no sense to exclude students who have scored 98.75 and select those having 99.25 just because our dude with 98.75 could not solve a "time and distance" problem (which the latter succesfully solved!) and hence rejected! Rejected from studying in the IIM's coz they are considered "not competitive enough" to do an MBA from them. Why? coz "time and distance" was the problem!

c'mon, can a process be more immature than this? As abhishek pointed out, a students ability to interact with people, his attitude, his ideals, how MBA fits in his career, how an MBA will be helpful for him, his work ex, his achievements in the past etc. must be considered "along with his score" while selecting rather than using this lop sided approach.

I hope things change for the better in the future.

[Alaric]

hey pradeep n all

U ppl hav a point but also consider the fact, that given the limited number of seats in top b schools, IIMs, FMS, XL etc and a large pool of applicants approx 1.5 lac to 1.8 lac with diverse backgrnd, a method hav to be adopted for shortlisting thm that has to be objective.
The questn is not whether a guy with 0.25%ile less than othr is incapable, but the fact is the guy with .25%ile higher score performed slightly better at the line of decisn on pre declared selection criteria std. The qstn is not of time n distance, its of performin to ur level best, using proper selectn.
As per ur logic a guy who fails any exam at 44.5 marks nd othr one who passes it at 45.5 marks (with 45 being passing marks) is jst nt abl to write one extra sentence thats why he failed. But that does sentence matters!! There has to be a border!

Alaric

[AbhishekP]

the limited no of seats is the root cause of all ills. An developing economy like India requires more seats. And it is laughable when the argument is made that the IIMs can't increase seats in order to maintain quality. We don't realise it, but the pressing need of the hour is to increase intake at all top b-schools in India.
And a course like MBA is not like a normal academic course. Its more to do with the individual as a whole than merely the CAT. Precisely why it takes more than a good GMAT score to get to Harvard.