IIM Ahmedabad - Indian Institute of Management Vastrapur Answered Questions

Yes, Mathematics is a necessary subject as CAT has one section dedicated to Mathematics. Also half the courses that are being taught in IIMs are maths based. However being a commerce graduate you are not at all in a disadvantaged position. There are a lot of commerce graduates studying in IIMA. They don't actually cover advanced mathematics like calculus.

Yes, you most certainly are eligible to appear for CAT. However to merit an interview call from IIM's, you will have to do really well in your CAT. IIMs usually give a lot of weightage to past academic performance and you would not be in the top half. Hence to compensate for the same, you will need to be among top 0.5% in CAT. I would suggest you prepare well for CAT.

It depends and changes year to year. IIMA calculates composite score for all candidates. CAT percentile is the major component of the composite score. However it also depends on your marks of class 10th, 12th and graduations. It also takes into account your masters score and work experience if any. Hence if you have really good 10th, 12th, and graduation score, you can expect call from IIMA even with slightly lower CAT percentile. To give you a representative figure, if you have an average academic record, you will need to score 99.7 percentile. With really good record, you can expect a call with 99.2 -99.5 percentile as well.

Although you will clear all the cutoffs, but without a really good CAT score probably you will not receive interview call from IIMs. Given these score I would suggest that you should do really well in CAT and try to achieve at least 99.5 percentile. If you get more than 99.5 percentile with more than 95 percentile in all subsections, you will definitely get few interview calls from high ranked IIMs.

You need to have scored at least 60% in class 10th, 12th and graduation and should have completed your graduation from any of the Universities incorporated by an act of the central or state legislature in India or other educational
institutions established by an act of Parliament or declared to be deemed as a University under section 3 of UGC Act,
1956, or possess an equivalent qualification recognized by the Ministry of HRD, Government of India.
Fees for IIMs vary from college to college, but it ranges from 18-20 lakhs for two years course.

MBA is usually hectic, at least the first year. Hence I would advise you to relax now and meet your friends. Still if you want to do something, talk to people and try to network. Know more about the college you are going to and try to develop a understanding of different fields that you can choose eventually.

Practice is the only key to success in CAT. Questions are very easy and given sufficient time, everyone will be able to solve all the questions. The trick is to solve the questions when time is a constraints. Hence speed and accuracy matters a lot.I would suggest you improve on these two factors and practice is the only way to do that.

Yes, you can most certainly try again for CAT. There is no limit to number of attempts you can take for CAT. However they keep a count of number of attempts. You have decent academic record and a fair chance of getting into IIMs if you do good in CAT. I would suggest you prepare well and give it your best shot this year.