30 city students expect IIM calls

The results of the Common Admission Test (CAT) for admissions to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Managements (IIMs) are out, and about 30 candidates from the city are expected to receive interview calls from some of the top rung B-schools like IIMs in Ahmadabad, Kolkata and Lucknow. The aspirants were happy over the outcome as the scores touched a new high this year. However, the day was marred with problems in the website - www.catiim.in - which took a long time to open owing to heavy load.

Interestingly, Maharashtra has topped among those who scored 100 percentile, with three candidates achieving the feat out of 1.86 lakh who took the exam. The CAT is the gateway to not only IIMs but also other business schools which select candidates on the basis of scores in this entrance test.

Sadly, none of the top scorers is from the city. Last year, Pushpak Pusegaonkar from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT) had achieved this feat. Last year, over 25 students from different institutes in the city including a handicapped students had got calls from the IIMs.

Nonetheless, a good number of management aspirants from the city managed to get good percentiles. Akash Agarwal scored 99.90 percentile and was closely followed by Rohit Gadkhel who managed to score 99.84.

The elated director of a coaching class Nihit Mor said that as is usually the trend, experienced candidates will be preferred by the IIMs. His student Akash managed to get a very good score while 15 others scored in excess of 95 percentile. "The candidates who have some job experience are much more likely to end up in one of the IIMs. There is no one scoring 100 percentile from Nagpur this year, but some have managed to score quite well. Those appearing for CAT for the second time have managed to score much more than the first-timers," he said.

T Ram Mohan, who heads a coaching centre in the city, believes that this year the percentile had gone up significantly resulting in higher scores for all candidates. His student Rohit scored 99.84 percentile with 296/450 marks while last year's all-India topper had recorded score of 289/450. As many as 15 students from his centre managed to meet the percentile criteria of the IIMs. "The question paper was relatively easy as compared to last year and therefore the students managed to get high scores. But admissions will be equally tough," he warned.

Rohit, who managed to score 99.84 percentile, was thrilled about his impressive score. "I gave CAT for the third time. I would say that the difficulty level was high and very unpredictable. Some said it was easy and some said it was difficult, so it's hard to describe. I have received calls from IIM Lucknow and Kolkata till now. The rest haven't updated the call list on their websites yet." Gadkhel will now be moving on to give the personal interview and group discussion at the institutes.