IIM-A’s admission criteria undermines relevance of CAT

At a time when the country is rejoicing over Indian education system’s freedom from the regressive marks based evaluation system, bang comes an announcement from one of the country’s top institutes to offset the jubilant mood. It is a reiteration of their known stand that it will still take us time before we change our mindset to let go of percentages and marks while tapping future talent.

As the CAT results are declared, each of the six Indian Institutes of Management has come out with their selection criteria on the basis of which they give admission to deserving candidates. While some chose to give maximum weightage to CAT scores; others opted for dividing the weightage between the CAT scores, academic performance, work experience and personal interviews.
 
But the shocker was dished out by the IIM-Ahmedabad camp. The institute has gone a step ahead revealing for the first time its criterion of setting a minimum 70 percent cut-off in higher secondary or senior secondary examinations as a benchmark for admission.
 
The announcement does not mince words while getting across its position. What they want to convey through this announcement is that you might be a CAT topper, but if you have not been able to obtain a measly 70 percent in your Class X or XII exams, it’s time you said goodbye to the IIM dream.
 
What is shocking is the timing of the announcement and the fact that it has come from an IIM, the country’s premier management institute. Clearly, someone was bunking classes when the entire nation was discussing the urgency to do away with the marks based evaluation system, making education stress-free and curbing the rat race. The best explanation that the institute could muster was that the decision would now help to do away with the complexity of calculation while preparing merit lists.
 
Are merit lists all that we are talking about at this point? Is it so easy to overlook the fact that we are excluding students from competition completely, solely based on their high school scores? Is that a fair enough criterion? Do scores alone provide an insight into how good a manager a person can become or what his or her true managerial capabilities would be. And then, we are taking into account scores which the student managed in his or her teenage, scores which had nothing to do with on the job skills.
 
While students who have secured scores higher than 70 percent might feel the decision was one that has finally acknowledged their slogging through their teens to finally provide them a well deserved edge over those who squandered their time. But who justifies the decision if a CAT high scorer gets rejected for scoring less than 70 percent in high school.
 
It is difficult to digest the fact that an IIM came up with a selection criterion that completely overlooks the score in their very own entrance exam. Then why hold it in the first place. If the CAT score makes no difference, why would someone slog hard for this coveted exam just to see it all go down the drain when it matters the most.
 
Yes, it could have worked well if some alterations and additions were made to the rule. If academic performance has to be taken as a sole criterion, then at best divide the weightage among CAT scores and high school scores. Things would have been understandable that way.
 
More so, the benchmark is applicable to the general category students alone. it is they who turn out to be the privileged lot to bear the onslaught well, since competition is toughest in the general category and understandably the institute is only killing it for the well deserving ones.
 
Even work experience and past records on the job, which should actually be the factors of utmost importance, were surprisingly simply ignored. One fails to see an iota of reasonable thinking having gone into this decision. Other than easing matters from the administrative point of view, the whole concept of a 70 percent benchmark seems no good.
 
It is difficult to overcome the exasperation that arises from such outlandish decisions coming up in this time and age of educational reforms. Under the circumstances one wonder, whether we will ever manage to break free from the conservative mindset?
 
No matter what reforms we bring in and how much we might talk of making efforts to free the education system from the shackles of a marks dominated evaluation criteria; somewhere down the line decisions like these reiterate the fact that our marks will remain stamped on our foreheads as an announcement of our capabilities above all other factors, for years to come.