- Academics - X, XII, and graduation score are considered, but they don't weigh on your application as heavily as in the case of IIM A (for shortlisting) and IIM Bangalore (for shortlisting and final selection). Std X scores carry 1 mark, Std XII scores carry 1 mark and graduation scores carry 3 marks. Academics therefore contribute 10% at the interview shortlisting stage, and 5% at the final selection stage. Marks are normalized at every stage.
- Work experience counts for 2 marks (i.e. 4% at the interview shortlisting stage)
- 5 points for diversity (i.e. 10% at the interview shortlisting stage) which will lead to a lot of debate as usual. Of these, 3 marks are for academic diversity (based on stream of graduation) and 2 marks are for gender diversity (given only to women). Definitely the odds are stacked in favour of female non-engineers - they are the only ones who can reach a total of 50 points in the interview shortlisting stage, while male engineers are capped at a maximum of 45. A male engineer without work ex will find himself at a significant disadvantage (especially if graduation scores are less than stellar).
- At the second stage, the GD, PI and WAT will count for 10, 30 and 10 points respectively. IIM Lucknow remains one of the few older IIMs not to have done away with the GD. The total points, therefore will be out of 100.
Test Cases
For the general category, we have done an analysis for everyone to understand how the various type of candidates fare at a certain scaled score. Let's see how male engineers stack up against the competition.
Assumptions:
We assume the Total CAT score remains 450.
We assume all candidates have 10th and 12th scores between the 90th and 95th percentile.
| Candidate Type | CAT Scaled Score | CAT Points out of 38 | Gender Diversity out of 2 | Domain Diversity out of 3 | 10th Std out of 1 | 12th Std Out of 1 | Total out of 45 |
| Female – Diverse Background | 275 | 23.22 | 2 | 3 | 0.75 | 0.75 | 29.72 |
| Female – Engineer | 275 | 23.22 | 2 | 0 | 0.75 | 0.75 | 26.72 |
| Male – Diverse Background | 275 | 23.22 | 0 | 3 | 0.75 | 0.75 | 27.72 |
| Male Engineer | 298 | 25.16 | 0 | 0 | 0.75 | 0.75 | 26.66 |
Assume the 4 types of applicants to IIM Lucknow to have the scores above. Clearly, a General Engineer Male has a lot to fight against to achieve parity with other types of candidate . An additional 23 Scaled CAT Score Points are wiped away clean by the virtue of the other applicants being of a certain ‘Type’. But mind you, this score is out of 45 whereas the final analysis for a shortlist is out of 50.
The Other 5 Points – Work Ex (2 out of 50) and Grad Score (3 out of 50)
The G E M has his grad score and his work experience to try and narrow this gap against the others in the case above. A work experience of 20 Months gives you 2 out of 2 and technically, a male engineer with 20+ Months of work ex can be even with a fresher engineer female if both have the same Scaled CAT Score. Also, one can hope grad scores normalization stays in your favour and you don’t lose ground even if you can’t realistically cover much ground.
Conclusion
The selection criteria have a lot of conditions, and clearly it is again a case of ‘right person at the right time at the right place’ phenomenon to bag that IIM L call!
We invite our readers to comment with their views on the selection criteria. Do you like it, or do you prefer the status quo?
Visit the Final Admit Page – InsideIIM’s one stop shop for everything related to admissions. Ankit Doshi’s analysis on the changed CAT 2014 can be found here
For last year’s selection criteria at IIM L, read here
For this year's selection criteria at IIM A, read here
For this year's selection criteria at IIM B, read here
For this year's selection criteria at IIM C, read here
Selection Criteria for CAT 2013
Our analysis of IIM Lucknow’s criteria
Our analysis of IIM Kozhikode’s criteria
Our analysis of IIM Indore’s criteria
Selection Criteria for CAT 2012
Our analysis of shortlisting criteria
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