The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have, till date, invited close to 6,000 CAT candidates for a personal interview.
While the shortlisted candidates’ list for IIM Bangalore, Indore and Ranchi is awaited, four out of the eight IIMs—Ahmedabad, Shillong, Calcutta and Lucknow--have sent call letters to 5,763 candidates. IIM Kozhikode is expected to put up the shortlisted candidates list by Wednesday night.
"Around 3,507 candidates have received individual offers from either IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Calcutta, IIM Lucknow or IIM Shillong, while 2,256 have received calls from more than one IIM. Around 3500 candidates got one call from one IIM last year. So, we can say that the number of students getting individual calls this year is more than last year," says Gautam Puri, vice-chairman, Career Launcher.
Unlike last year, when IIM-A made around 800 calls, IIM-A will conduct personal interviews for the 960 aspirants whom it has issued call letters for its post-graduate programmes from March 14 onwards. The reason for calling a larger number of candidates for interview this year is the increased seat capacity at the IIMs, according to Diptesh Ghosh, chairperson-admissions at IIM-A. Once concluded, the institute expects to put out the final list of selected students within two weeks.
IIM-Shillong has invited 1,260 candidates – it has120 students in common with IIM-A. IIM Lucknow has called 1,600 candidates and IIM Calcutta 1,400 candidates for the group discussion and personal interview.
Meanwhile, the Students’ Affairs Council of IIM Ahmedabad has started an 'Ask the students' initiative to help out shortlisted aspirants with the next round of the selection procedure. Last year, this round consisted of essay writing and an interview.
IIM-A shortlisted candidates can mail all their queries to 'askthestudents@iimahd.ernet.in'. The common queries will be put up on the student-run blog http://askthestudents.org/ while more personal queries will be replied to via mail or the aspirants will be called up by the students themselves. This is the first time that the students have come up with such an initiative at IIMA.
This being an entirely student driven initiative, there will be no involvement of the institute or the admissions committee. The students hope that this maiden venture will be helpful to aspirants and could be taken up at a bigger level next time.
