How can I get an Interview Call from IIM Calcutta ?

Salient points

-  We do not see any major changes from last year.

-  Graduation score will not be a factor either in the initial shortlisting stage or the final call stage. (Although your academic performance in graduation may indirectly influence their perception of you during the interview stage, and therefore, find its way to the final evaluation).

-  Gender diversity encouraged  - three marks for being a woman. (This will help only in the initial shortlisting stage and not be a factor in the final selection).

- Weightage for work-experience on a scale of 0-8 where 36 months of work ex gets 8 points, and from there on, up to 42 months, your work-ex score gets reduced to 5 points. (Work-experience in terms of number of months, will be calculated as of January 2015).

Decoding the criteria

The minimum CAT percentiles are same as that required by IIM Ahmedabad (in the general category). The requirements are slightly more stringent than IIM Bangalore.

For the GD-PI Interview call, you have 77 points for CAT score, 3 points for gender diversity, and 10 points each for standard X and standard XII scores. (The points out of 5 from the table below will be scaled to 10)

Verdict

- The three marks benefit for gender diversity is not something that guys can complain about, and frankly, it is not too difficult to get more than 80% in your Std. X and Std XII. It is graduation where the differences in percentages across boards becomes very severe. But graduation scores are not being considered, and getting more than 80% in Std X and Std XII will put you in the top bracket any way, so you need not worry about normalization. In short, the battle to get an interview call from IIM Calcutta for CAT 2014 is an all-out war based mainly on your CAT percentile.

Making the final cut

- At this stage, the selection process at IIM Calcutta has elements of both IIM Bangalore (weightage to work experience) and IIM Ahmedabad (skew towards performance at the interview).

The total score out of 100 is broken up as

- 35 marks for CAT

-  54 marks for Personal Interview (44) and Written Task (10). (The high weightage given to this stage has echoes of IIM Ahmedabad – where it is slightly higher at 60%).

-  8 marks for work experience

-  3 marks for educational diversity (2 for diversity at graduate level, 1 for diversity at post-graduate level)

Comparison with IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Bangalore

While IIM Bangalore has several checks and balances to ensure that only people with great overall profiles (past acads, work ex) get through, IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Calcutta’s criteria are skewed towards performance at the all-important interview. While IIM Ahmedabad has some additional criteria for shortlisting for interviews (preference for educational diversity, and weightage for graduation score), IIM Calcutta has more lenient criteria, and has special focus on gender diversity.

Conclusion

If you have a less-than-stellar past academic record, IIM Calcutta is your best bet. It is a straight battle between percentiles. Graduation scores are not considered. Even in the scores for Std X and Std XII which are considered, you get full marks for being above 81% (whereas at IIM Ahmedabad, you need more than 90% for full marks in Std X and Std XII). We get several queries in our helpline from people claiming that their poor acads are the only thing standing between them and a place in the top IIMs. Well, the answer to them is loud and clear – at IIM C you have no excuses. It is a straight battle between percentiles, and IIM C represents your best chance to get into the ABC bracket if you have poor acads.