What does an IIM want?

Its really dificult to pinpoint what each IIM wants specifically, but some general trend that have been there are as follows......

Ofcourse crossing the sectional %ile in each section is very much required, and believe me pinpointing the sectinal %iles is even more dificult ...apart from that ..

IIM A : Initial Call: This is the only IIM that considers the prev acads at the initial call level itself. Actually it seems the last CAT was the first time it did it. Acads actually has to be good even tho u have ..lets say an IIT background. Again even if u r from an unk *univ with studs acad it will still help.Final Call: Again Acads with heavy weitage on GD & PI. IIM A gives the lowest weitage to %ile out of all IIMs. If u carck IIM A interview(ie cracking is as per the interviewver and not interviewee ) u can rest assured that u can get thru even with very low %ile. Ofcourse the sectional cutoff matters.Also IIM A does a concious effort to keep the batch profile 50:50 *workex and fresher, so both get equal chances.Most selections in the range 100-99.3%ile with some in 98%ile too.

IIM B :Initial Call: Routine sectional Cutoff with slight edge to workexFinal Call: as pointed out in prev. post, CAT %ile. Just that. Be sure of having a very good %ile ie >=99.7 to make thru. No matter even if u dropped a year in ur engg. *And if u have i>99.7%ile, Just be careful not to screw GD/PI, i mean even decent performanace will do. Also, it seems they make a consious effort to keep the batch profile of 60:40 workex and fresher ratio.Most selections in the range 100-99.6%ile. Almost nil below that(discounting workex).

IIM C:Initial Call: This time it combined PS+Graph part of Di and VA+ Logic part of DI and gave sectional cutoffs to these two section. No gurantee that it will do that gaian. Unlike A no weitage to backgrnd and stuff, just routine cutoffFinal Call: It gave weitage to Gd/PI that was in between A & B. Overall the weitages were equally distributed between Cat score and GD/Pi stage. It did gave slight more *weitage to engg background, more so to IITians. That does not means that if u r an IITian/engg u will get thru, just better chances than u will have at other IIMs. It seems that IIM C does no effeort to make any kindof workex:fresher ratio. The ratio has varied a lot in last few years. This year they have a 60% workex batch.Most selections in 100-99.3%ile.

IIM L: Initial Call: Routine, sectinal %ile for initial calls.Final Call: Sort of a Mixture. Up till 99.7%ile it went just with %ile and more often than not it gave a final call. Again someone screwing up GD/PI badly did get kicked out, but most of them got a call. AFter tht uptil 99.2-3 %ile performance at GD/Pi level needs to be better than decent to get through.And below that there was a high weitage to GD/PI and previous CAads. They asked a lot of acad based questions in the interview and that was 1 determining point.I believe for fresher they went till 98.5%ile For workex a liitle lower.

IIM I &K: Not too much data so am clubbing them together. Also they did seem to do similar things.Routine, sectinal %ile for initial calls. One demarcating feature was that they gave calls to ppl who have a low in just 1 section but a good(>99%ile) overall %ile and thus missed on other calls. I dunno believe that this was a result of clubbing the sections, just that they did it this way. Worke helped a huge lot in their Initial and Final Calls
FOr all IIMs workex had a bit of pref. at both initial and final level in respect of %iles and other criterias.

I Hope it helps.