IIM Waitlist Movement 2026: Category wise Expected Movement with Previous Year Analysis

Candidates who have applied for IIM admissions can keep track of the past waitlist movement to analyse how the waitlist can change after the shortlist is released. Check IIM waitlist movement trends and expected movement for IIM admissions 2026.

Category wise IIM Waitlist Movement

IIM Waitlist Movement refers to the change in the waitlist numbers during the admission process. Candidates meeting CAT cut offs get PI shortlist call. During the IIM admission process, several candidates are kept in the waitlist. IIM waitlisted candidates may or may not get a PI call during the admission process.

Some test takers miss a chance of MBA admission into IIM even after they get their names included in the IIM waitlist. This list of students waiting for someone to give up their seats can be termed a waitlist. Scroll down to check IIM waitlist movement in the past session. Also check expected IIM waitlist movement 2026 here.   

What is IIM Selection Process?

India has a total of 21 IIMs; all of these IIMs are ranked among the top 100 b-schools by NIRF. All the Indian Institute of Management have a rigorous selection process. Candidates not only need a good CAT score, but should have a stunning profile. Most of the IIMs have Group Discussion round, also known as GD round, as an essential aspect of the selection process. While some IIMs, including IIM Ahmedabad, have ditched the GD round and conduct personal interview and Academic Writing Test (AWT), along with other factors, as part of the IIM admission process.

IIMs follows a defined selection criteria for admission of the candidates the PGP course. These steps include-

• Candidates are screened based on the CAT cxam score, sectional cutoff ranks, and overall cutoff rank for the subsequent stages of the IIM selection process.
• Shortlisted candidates have to appear for AWT/WAT/GD & Personal Interview (PI)

The final selection for IIM admission is strictly based on the category-wise shortlisting and the Final Composite Score (FCS).

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What is IIM Waitlist Movement?

Every year, lakhs of candidates apply for admission to MBA programmes offered by the IIMs. Since the total number of seats of all 20 IIMs is about 4000, not everyone gets successful. Once the first list of selected candidates are announced, another batch of selected students is kept waiting in case any student chooses to forgo their seat. The seat is then offered to the next best candidate. This list of students waiting for someone to give up their seats can be termed a waitlist.

IIM waitlist mainly consists of the number of seats that move up from the waitlist slab to offer. Each year’s observation depicts that the students wait long for the waitlist of IIM Ahmedabad (IIMA), IIM Bangalore (IIMB) and IIM Calcutta (IIMC) to move so that the chances of their admission get brighter. Nevertheless, the new and emerging IIM waitlist movement has also caught attention lately.

The waitlist movement in IIMs and a few top MBA colleges is category-dependent. For the general category, it is extremely stringent, while for the SC, ST, OBC and PwD category there is some relaxation.

IIM Lucknow does not release the waitlist. Instead of releasing the merit list. For a student to secure their position on the merit list, they need to qualify the minimum requirement which is 12 out of 40 in the PI round.

Also Read: IIM shortlist 2025: Check dates, status and admission process

IIM Waitlist Movement 2026 (Expected)

Check expected IIM waitlist movement below:

Also Read:

• IIM Shillong Waitlist Movement 2026
• IIM Raipur Waitlist Movement 2026

Highlights of Past Trends of the IIM Waitlist

Except the admission teams of individual IIMs, one cannot perhaps give the accurate data on the waitlist movement. However, based on the data published in various online platforms such as blogs, student-answering platform, we have mentioned below the past trends of waitlist movement of both Old, New and Emerging IIMs in the past two years. Take a look.

IIM Ahmedabad

IIM Bangalore

IIM Bangalore (MBA Business Analytics)

IIM Calcutta

IIM Lucknow Waitlist Movement

IIM Kozikhode

IIM Indore

IIM Ranchi

IIM Trichy

IIM Udaipur

IIM Kashipur

IIM Nagpur

For the students seeing their name in the IIM waiting list is an unsettling situation. However, this also implies that IIM selection committee thinks these candidates in the list to be strong. One thing about the waitlist is at least they can still hope to get admission in their dream institute. But, we recommend students to keep a backup plan and keep chasing their aspirations.

Note: We have extracted the data of past trends of waitlist movement from third party source. If, you know something related to past trends, you may share it with us.

Factors Affecting IIM Waitlist Movement

Some of the common factors that can affect IIM waitlist movement are mentioned here.

• Candidates prefer old IIMs, like Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta, Indore, or Kozhikode over newer IIMs. This leads to a faster movement in newer IIM waitlists.
• Besides a preference for old IIMs, some candidates prefer top-tier non-IIMs for MBA admissions, leading to a faster movement in IIM waitlist.
• Candidates with multiple offers may opt out of an allotment during later stages of the admission process. Therefore, leading to IIM waitlist movement. Several candidates prefer FMS over IIMs.
• ROI of the institute plays a big role in waitlist movement. Colleges with better ROI tend to attract more candidates. Therefore, candidates opt out of their IIM calls for a better ROI
• Location of the institute may lead to a significant waitlist movement. Some candidates may prefer an institute that offers decent placement near their hometown.

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