Students’ Speak: MBA dreams don’t end with CAT and IIMs
Common Admission Test 2025 ( CAT )
Exam On - 30 Nov '25
Once in our lifetime, we must face and never do any negative things that may impact you and your family. Well, scoring less in entrance may not lead you to your dream college, but you can also shortlist other b-schools.
Bharat Debbarma, a second-year MBA student emphasises how CAT exam and IIMs are not the only way to accomplish management education. He also points out the importance of Mandatory Disclosures in b-school selection.
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The things that I would like to suggest you based on my experience and knowledge are that don’t get disheartened even if you can’t score as much as you want as it is not the end of life. There are many students who are not privileged to even write the exam. Moreover, many other good b-schools accept lower scores in entrance exams and don’t give much weightage to the scores of entrance exams.
We must understand that failure is a beginning and it is a part of our life. Once in our lifetime, we must face and never do any negative things that may impact you and your family. Well, scoring less in entrance may not lead you to your dream college, but you can also shortlist other b-schools that give less weightage to entrance exams and more weightage to GDPI and which may be at par with your dream college. Many other good b-schools in the country accept less score, have a good ranking of the college and maintain decent placements records.
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A college can be shortlisted based on many criteria. Some of them are:
- Mandatory Disclosure
- Accreditations like AICTE, NBA, NAAC, ACSB, etc.
- Placement records
- NIRF Rankings
- Forum
I would say that among all the best and reliable source for shortlisting is through checking the mandatory disclosure for any college as it is a written document that colleges have to prepare and upload it on their sites. This document gives you all the detailed information that you need.
First, to shortlist for good colleges you must search in the top 100 b-schools list, select the top 40 - 100 colleges among them and try to download their mandatory disclosures and go through their criteria as every single detail will be laid down in the disclosures. Thus out of the top 40-100 colleges, you may able to shortlist the college that will suit you and meets your cut-offs. Shortlisting college through their mandatory disclosure will give you a competitive advantage over other candidates.
However, if you only desire to join your dream college, I would like to suggest that you kindly re-appear for the exam next year by devoting more time and hard work. It will definitely pay rich dividends for you. A year gap is not a problem in the management studies. Instead, during the gap year, preparing and devoting time for competitive exams like CAT, MAT, CMAT, etc. will bring you a step closer to your dream college.
About the Author:
Bharat Debbarma is a second-year student pursuing MBA in Marketing Management and IB (2018-19 batch) from Rajagiri College of Social Sciences, Kochi. He has also interned with HDFC Bank Limited in the past.
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