(10) CAT-a-LOG: All about CAT, IIMs and Coaching.
Article(10) CAT-a-LOG: Mental Health:(ii): Unintentional support of IIMs to Coaching Institutes.
Esteemed IIMs are the second entity to blame for this mental health issue. They have raised a very high standard for the selection of students for their Programmes. This is really good for students, IIMs, Corporate World, Business world and the Country. No two opinions about that.
All the students who are selected from General Category in these IIMs have more than 85 to 90% marks in Class X and Class XII. And a very high percentage or CGPA in University degrees too.
Despite having set such high academic standards; the CAT 2023 eligibility criteria for General Category is only 50% marks in University degree! And there is no minimum marks criteria for X or XII
It means a student with just passing marks in Class X and Class XII can apply for one of the most difficult and much hyped exam known as CAT.
The individual IIM eligibility criteria are different than this CAT eligibility Criteria.
All IIMs are going to have academic ranking also based on Class X/XII and University degree marks in which General Category students even scoring 80% marks or 85% marks are not likely to be shortlisted for interview.
Even if a General Category student with 50% marks in X scores 100 percentile in CAT; there is practically no chance for him to be selected in IIMs as his academic ranking will be extremely low.
Most of the innocent parents and their children are not able to differentiate between CAT Eligibility Criteria and Individual IIMs Eligibility Criteria. And many of them are also not aware about Academic Ranking prepared by the IIMs.
Printed brouchers of Coaching Institutes for CAT also do not mention anything about Individual IIMs Eligibility Criteria.
Moreover IIMs allow students to appear in CAT any number of times. Thus they encourage Coaching Institutes to brainwash gullible students to become 'Serial CAT takers'.
The IIMs believe in maximising the no of applicants and their profits from the applicants every year. For CAT 2023, they have taken fees of Rs. 2400 from General Category Students and Rs. 1200 from Reserved Category Students. The fees collection will be more than Rs. 50 Crores this year.
This year, the number of applicants will be certainly more than 3 lakhs, much more than 255501, achieved last year. Out of which around 2 to 2.2 % students will be selected for various IIMs for all Categories.
Another fact is that the CAT score is used by more than 1000 MBA colleges of India. And more than 900 of these colleges will accept students even if they have not appeared in the CAT. IIMs may kindly correct me on these numbers which may be really startling.
IIMs receive money from the students in the form of fees and then by selling the students data to various MBA colleges who opt for accepting CAT score.
Unfortunately, IIMs are helping Coaching Institutes, perhaps unintentionally, to attract more and more students by lowering eligibility criteria in this manner.
If IIMs start explaining their policies clearly to students and parents through their websites, blogs and alumni; the unreasonable and mad rush for CAT by the aspirants not actually suitable for the exam will be reduced and the issue of mental health will also be addressed more meaningfully.
The questions to IIMs are very simple:
(1) When you are not going to accept in your IIMs any student from General Category who gets less than 85% or 90% marks in Class X/XII and/or less than 70% or 60% marks in Bachelor's degree; why do you want students scoring lowly in X/XII/Bachelor's degree to appear in the CAT? Just to collect application fees? Just to be a conduit for other MBA colleges?
(2) Should you not be a bit more proactive to counsel the students in plain simple language about your exact requirement in academics and CAT?
(3) Should you not discourage hapless, innocent students to become serial CAT takers?
(4) Can you allow Coaching Institutes to hoodwink students by not educating them about CAT?
Have written an open letter to Directors of all IIMs requesting them to kindly do something to improve mental health of CAT aspirants.
If I receive any response from any IIM on the above issues; will post the same prominently in a separate post in this blog.
Pankaj Khanna
Indore (9424810575)
B.E. (Mech.) SGSITS Indore 1983 Batch
-Worked with HPCL from 1984 to 2007.
-Faculty Maths/DI-LR -T.I.M.E. Indore 2007-20
-Faculty Maths/DI-LR-IMS Indore-June22-July23.
-Blogger on diverse subjects.( Love thy Numbers, Epeolatry, CAT-a-LOG, Corruption in Oil Companies, Tawa Sangeet, Ikshak Indori and a few more.)
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List of Articles of the blog CAT-a-LOG:
Section A: The articles written in this section are about basics of Self-Mentoring, MBA, CAT and perils of Parallel Education System (Coaching Institutes). Everyone concerned about Coaching Classes including the Parents and Students are requested to kindly go through following Articles in this Section before joining any Coaching Institute for CAT.
Section B : This section is all about Mental Health of CAT aspirants. The darker side of CAT Preparation nobody discusses. These articles should also be read by Everyone including Parents and Students.
Section C: It is about detailed CAT Preparation Plans for Students. Parents may also Read:)