MBA CET-2009 results and the GD-PI process

Every year, the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) declares the MBA-CET written test results in March, leaving a student guessing. The result that he gets at this stage consists of his written scores and his percentile. With the next stage of selection Group Discussion and Personal Interview (GD-PI) scheduled to take place in May, a
student is left with a lot of questions after the CET results...

What is a percentile score?
The percentile is an indicator of the percentage of students below you or ahead of you. Hence a 99.00 percentile indicates that 99% of students who took the test are below you or you are among the top 1%.

According to Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) sources, around 1,10,000 students took the CET in 2009. This means that there are approximately 11 students at every 0.01 percentile. So, if you have a 99.90 percentile, there are approximately 110 students above you.

Institutes and cut-offs
Students generally ask which institute they can get into after they get their written test scores. This is a tough question to answer. The reason is that it depends on several factors e.g. the category that you belong to, the number of students above you in that category, the marks you score in GD-PI, and the preferences you have indicated in the online option form in the Centralised Admission Process (CAP).

Every institute has seats reserved for different categories--Home University Open (HU), Home University Reserved, Maharashtra State but Outside Home University (OHU), and Outside Maharashtra (Also known as All India - OMS or AI).
In the second stage, you can score a maximum of 34 marks in GD-PI (17 in each), and a total of another six marks consisting of four marks for your Past Academic Record (PAR) and two marks for Work Experience (WE). This means, you still have an opportunity to add another 40 marks to your written test score.

You are required to register for GD-PI starting May 11, 2009, and the last date for registration is May 22, 2009. The GD-PI process will start on May 25, 2009, and will go on till June 12, 2009. The provisional merit list and the final score (out of 240) will be displayed on June 22, 2009 while the final list will be put up on June 29, 2009. Forfurther details on this you can visit the official DTE websitewww.dte.org.in

What is the ideal GD-PI score?
This depends on the institute you want to get into. For most MMS aspirants, the dream institute is Jamnalal Bajaj (JBIMS). If we look at last years' admission data, the overall cut-off score for JBIMS in the Home University Open Category (General) was 183 marks. However, every student with a score of 183 did not make it to JBIMS. A student with a CET score of 152 (corresponding to 99.94 percentile last year) had a good chance of getting into JBIMS with an average GD-PI score (including an average of four marks in PAR and WE).

Last year, there were 13 students who secured admissions in JBIMS through the Home University Open category seats, by scoring 30 marks or more in their GD-PI alone (without PAR and WE). A student with a written test score of 147 (99.85 percentile) scored 37 out of 40 (31 in GD-PI, 4 in PAR and 2 in WE) at the second stage and secured a JBIMS seat. The other extreme - a student with a CET score of 159 (99.99 percentile in CET 2008) scored only 21 marks out of 40 in his second stage and missed a seat in JBIMS by a big margin. This meansthat every single mark is critical in the second stage.

The bottom line remains that whatever be your CET score; you need to give your best in the GD-PI. It's high time that you start preparing for them to maximise your score out of 34.

The author is Parag Chitale, founder CEO of CPLC