RTI reveals IIM Ahmedabad admitted 38 percentile student

In an RTI response, the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad has disclosed that the minimum CAT percentile admitted to Post Graduate Programme (PGP) in Scheduled Tribe (ST) category is 38.34 percentile.

This information has come out as a shock for many. Various posts on forums and social media are doing rounds on this post.

The RTI was filed by Deepak Mehta, a former student of IIM-A. The RTI, dated February 4, 2014, was addressed to the Ministry Human Resource Department. He first posted the RTI response while responding to a post, “Reservation in India: Why is it that most of people complain about the reservation system based on caste only after their failure in some competitive exam?”, on Quora.com.  

“We must keep in mind that if a Gen category student fails to qualify in a competitive examination, it isn't as much failure on his/her part as much as it is the shameful inequity that exists,” he says while replying to a post on Quora.com.

Trying to clarify the issue, Shiksha.com spoke to the Admissions Office at IIM Ahmedabad. “This particular candidate (who scored 38.34 percentile) had high composite scores in other aspects. His academic background, interview scores and work-experience is excellent. All these factors contributed to his selection in the institute,” said the Admissions Officers at IIM-A.

When asked that the reputation and quality of the B-school will take a beating on admitting such a student, the officer replied, “The selection criteria last year was very different (View it here). There was no minimum percentile requirement. We conducted the admission according to the government norms. We have to fulfil the required seats in each category.”

“However, this year the first selection criteria is based on cut-off. We haven’t considered any candidate scoring the beneath the minimum cut-off. We considered 12,846 candidates for interview this time, all scoring above the minimum” he added.

But people on discussion forums are not satisfied.

“In 2013-15, a general category person with a 98 percentile score (4000 rank out of approximately 200,000 applicants) did not get admission into IIM-A. However, a 90 percentiler (20,000 rank) from OBC, a 72 percentiler (56,000 rank) from SC and a staggering 40 percentiler (120,000 rank and probably a negative score) from ST category did. Tell me that this is not unfair. Tell me that the general category guy/girl ‘failed’. No, they didn't fail. The system did.” said the post.

The IIMs are also currently under the public eye for alleged scores discrepancy in CAT 2013.