MBA from IIMs without CAT Exam: Check Courses List & Selection Criteria

Not ready for CAT exam? You can pursue MBA from IIMs without CAT exam score. Check this article for the list of MBA programmes for which CAT score is not mandatory.

Is it possible to pursue MBA from IIM without CAT score? Many management aspirants often ask education counsellors this question. This is a very genuine query, as CAT is a high difficulty level exam and require at least six to nine months of dedicated preparation to score 98-99 percentile, which is the average CAT cut off for admission to IIM MBA courses. Not many candidates, mainly working professional can’t dedicate that much of time for CAT preparation. Not many candidates score 99+ percentile in CAT despite dedicated preparation.

The CAT cut off percentile of top IIMs is 99+ percentile and that of rest of the IIMs is 95+. Since, over three lakh candidates apply for CAT exam and total number of full-time MBA seats in the 21 IIMs is around 4,500, many students miss the chance of securing an MBA seat at the institutes by a thin margin. Thus, many students look for options other than CAT, to pursue a management programme from IIM.

While, it is impossible to pursue full-time regular MBA from IIMs without CAT as it is a mandatory criteria for admission, there are other MBA courses candidates can opt for if they don’t want to appear in CAT or don't have a valid CAT score. In this article we have shared details of IIM MBA course without CAT which you can opt for as a working professional.

MBA aspirants can pursue the course at IIMs without appearing for CAT exam but they will have to appear for other exams such as GMAT/GRE. Given below is the table indication MBA courses from IIMs without CAT (including courses that have CAT as one of the multiple exam options):

The selection process of Executive MBA programmes offered by IIMs include Personal Interview. Written Ability Test along with PI is mandatory for some courses. Thus, the candidates need to prepare for admission on the basis of selection criteria of the course they choose to pursue.