CAT stands for the Common Admission Test. What is the golden prize you ask? A seat at the hallowed IIMs of the country, institutes where only the cream of the Indian education system is considered worthy to even give an interview.
And sitting on the top of the pile is IIM Ahmedabad, the best B-school of the country. However, even this test may not prove to be enough to get you into IIM Ahmedabad under a few circumstances.
The answer to the question
No. All the people who score a 100 percentile in CAT Exam do not get into IIM Ahmedabad.
You may consider it absolutely illogical that an institute is not willing to accept people who have secured the first position among lakhs of other individuals from across the country. But that’s exactly what happens.
What exactly bars them from admission?
As most present and past CAT aspirants, MBAs, and current students will tell you, the examination form for CAT requires you to give the marks you obtained in your class 10th and 12th board examinations too. This isn’t for no reason. People who have got less than 80 percent in either of these two examinations are considered ineligible for the institution.
Yes! The student you were when you were young and immature decides where the now brilliant student you have become will be admitted to.
Why?
You may ask yourself why does IIM Ahmedabad screen students on the basis of an exam students took half a decade ago. It does so to warn a student for performing poorly in those exams, even when it’s common knowledge that a student often gets less or more than they deserve in those exams due to the very nature of their checking.
There may have been several reasons for securing low marks in your boards: bad family conditions, less motivation, a mishap occurring a few days or during the exams, or just an absence of maturity to study well for one’s future. But the institute could not be less bothered. It does not care about the student who just beat the entire country to secure a 100 percentile. It cares about the student who could not score an 80 percent in his/her board exams.
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Is there a way around this?
Unfortunately, this cloud does not have a silver lining. There is no way around this. Even if you give the CAT 4 times in a row and score a 100 percentile in all of them, IIM Ahmedabad does not consider that as a mark of consistency.
This is a very shocking reality about one of the biggest institutes in the country and shows how flawed and unjust our education system can be at times. Yes there are also cases where people who may get a 100 percentile don’t choose to study in India and go abroad. But it is not the same as scoring a 100 percentile and still not getting into the best institute of the country.