And the CAT 2015 results were officially declared yesterday evening around 6:00 pm!! I say official, because the unofficial results were available since early morning(or probably even earlier). I woke up on 8th January to messages from students stating that they could see their percentiles in  the source-code of the page after they logged into their CAT account. And they now wanted me to  tell them whether the score could be taken to be authentic!! How ingenuous of whoever that first person was, to find about this anomaly that was overlooked by the developers of the application Website software. This resulted in hoardes of students getting to know their results (albeit a bit painfully) well before the CAT authorities declared – and probably helped the IIM cause of preventing the regular server crash that happens as soon as the results get announced.

The IIMs also sprang a surprise this time by first sending an SMS with the CAT overall percentile to all individual students – at around 1 PM, about 5 hours before the results. The SMS read: “Dear Candidate, Your percentile for CAT 2015 for application number ******* is XX.XX. Regards, IIM CAT” This surprise message  also helped curb the anxiety that students generally experience before they check the results.

And now that the results are out, I am sure there are a lot of you who have secured your expected scores (or even higher) and many more of you haven’t. However, the common question in the minds of everyone is “What Next?”.

If the CAT results turn out to be favorable –

i.e. you score as per your expectations or more, then the obvious next step would be to wait for the GD-PI calls from institutes that you have already applied to and if need be, apply to a few more Best-Fit institutes that still have their deadlines open. And once you secure the calls, work hard towards converting each and every one of the secured calls into a FINAL ADMIT. You cannot rest on your test achievements after getting a WAT-GD-PI call, you need to prepare equally hard to convert this call. Getting complacent at this stage can be very dangerous – there even have been 100 percentilers in the past who have not converted any of their IIM calls, so lesser mortals need to be all the more careful.

What’s a favourable score depends on a host of factors like Sectional Cut-offs, Category, Academic Stream, Academic grades, Gender and Work experience(quantum). Find below a list of indicative cut-offs for the top institutes that accept CAT scores  – the first chart includes cut-offs for General Category (freshers/working professionals) and the second for the NC-OBC Category.

(Note that these lists have been compiled on the basis of past data of IMS students – the actual cut-offs may vary based on differences in the above parameters. Female applicants, for example, may get calls at a lower percentile from some of the institutes)

For a comprehensive list of B-School cut-offs visit: B-School Cut-offs and click on the relevant tab: IIMs 2014 | Other Top 20 B-Schools | Other Institutes.

 If the CAT scores aren’t favorable –

i.e. if you do not score as per your expectations, then you will have to first wait for favorable results from other entrance tests. If you do get a good score in one or more of the other tests that you have taken, then work towards converting the GD-PI calls that you secure thereby, into Final Admits.

If you fail to score in the other entrance tests as well, then you need to take the critical decision of either taking up the next best choices available to you in the current year or waiting for one more year before retaking the CAT. I will write a separate post elaborating how you should ideally
go about taking this decision – however I sincerely hope that the readers of this blog never reach the stage where they need to take such a decision. In any case, do not lose heart – as they say a failure should always be viewed as a stepping stone to success!! And if you are committed to achieve your success, a CAT score cannot act as a deterrent to your achieving the same.

All the Best to all CAT 2015 aspirants for the next stage of the selection process!!

VK