CAT 2021 Topper Interview: Know How Vinay Kotwal Made it to the 99 Percentilers Club

Sectional cut-off in the CAT exam refers to the section-wise percentiles required by the candidate to make it to the Personal Interview round of the IIMs or other top MBA colleges. The sectional cut-offs are lower than the overall cut-offs of any institute. To understand better, check the table below for sectional CAT cut-offs for IIM Ahmedabad:

Category	VARC percentile	DILR percentile	QA percentile	Overall percentile
General	70	70	70	80
NC-OBC-Transgender	65	65	65	75
SC	60	60	60	70
ST	50	50	50	60
PwD (General, NC-OBC-cum-transgender, SC)	60	60	60	70
PwD (ST)	50	50	50	60

For sectional cut-offs of all IIMs, check this article – IIM shortlist and selection criteria

The CAT cut offs for IIM Lucknow is usually around 97-99 percentile. The two courses - PGP Agri-Business Management (ABM) and PGP Sustainable Management (some) are extremely popular among MBA aspirants who wish to make a career in these areas. The institute also offers PGP programme. The qualifying CAT cut off for IIM Lucknow's Written Ability test (What) and Personal Interview PI is 90 percentile for General category students, whereas for SC candidates, it is 70 percentile. For ST and PwD candidates, it is 60 percentile. Given below are the sectional and overall qualifying CAT cut offs for IIM Lucknow PGP course. General category: 85 VARC 85 DILR 85 Quantitative Aptitude 90 (Overall) NC-OBC category: 77 VARC 77 DILR 77 Quantitative Aptitude 82 (Overall) EWS category: 77 VARC 77 DILR 77 Quantitative Aptitude 82 (Overall) SC category: 55 VARC 55 DILR 55 Quantitative Aptitude 70 (Overall) ST category: 50 VARC 50 DILR 50 Quantitative Aptitude 60 (Overall) PwD category: 50 VARC 50 DILR 50 Quantitative Aptitude 60 (Overall) Click here for detailed IIM Lucknow admission and selection criteria: https://www.shiksha.com/mba/articles/iim-lucknow-shortlist-admission-criteria-blogId-18509.

Qualifying CAT cut off percentiles of Iims for Written Ability Test (What) and Personal Interview PI are listed below. Candidates who MET the qualifying CAT cut off, were eligible for What-PI round. These qualifying CAT cut offs are for General Category. The cut offs for Reserved category students are lower:

1. IIM Ahmedabad: 95 percentile
2. IIM Bangalore: 85 percentile 
3. IIM Calcutta: 85 percentile
4. IIM Lucknow: 90 percentile
5. IIM Kozhikode: 85 percentile
6. IIM Indore: 90 percentile
7. IIM Udaipur: 93 percentile
8. IIM Shillong: 75 percentile
9. IIM Trichy: 93 percentile
10. IIM Visakhapatnam: 80 percentile
11. IIM Rohtak: 95 percentile
12. 1IIM Nagpur: 85 percentile
13. IIM Jammu: 93 percentile 
14. IIM Ranchi: 90 percentile
15. IIM Sirmaur: 92 percentile
16. IIM Bodhgaya: 93 percentile
17. IIM Sambalpur: 93 percentile
18. IIM Kashipur: 94 percentile 
19. IIM Raipur: 93 percentile
20. IIM Amritsar: 90 percentile

For complete details of IIM selection and admission process read this article: https://www.shiksha.com/mba/articles/iim-shortlist-selection-admission-criteria-blogId-18787.

CAT cutoffs are usually not announced with the CAT result. The CAT cutoffs are also not released to the public.

They are published after a few days of the result announcement when the IIMs and other colleges start their shortlisting process. The IIMs opens their shortlisting window based on the CAT cut-offs two to three days after the result announcement. The CAT percentile of candidates shortlisted for the Written Ability Test (WAT), Group Discussion (GD), and Personal Interview (PI) can be considered the cut-off for that IIM. For example, if a candidate with a CAT percentile of 99 belonging to the General category is selected for the WAT/GD-PI of IIM Calcutta, then the CAT cut-off for IIM Calcutta is 99 percentile. Only those candidates who make it to the WAT/GD-PI round of IIMs will get to know the cut-offs.