The final placement process at IIM-Calcutta (IIM-C) kicked off to an expectedly positive start with top financial and global consulting firms making numerous offers to students from the batch of 2008-2010. The institute went into placements with more than 125 offers in hand.

More than 50 offers by day-zero finance firms, such as investment banks and private equity firms, have been received so far. The offers were for desks across the globe.

Companies like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Barclays Capital, Royal Bank of Scotland, JP Morgan and Credit Suisse have already made pre-placement offers (PPOs). In consulting, the usual favourites, such as McKinsey, BCG, Bain & Co and AT Kearney, were on campus and over 25 offers had been made at the time of writing this report. Opera Solutions hired exclusively from IIM-C.

UBS, the Swiss investment bank, also hired exclusively from IIM-C, while Temasek Holdings, the investment arm of the Singapore government, recruited the highest number of students from IIM-C compared to other campuses in the country. Oliver Wyman, the US-based consulting firm, also made the highest number of offers at IIM-C among all IIMs. It hired for its international offices in New York, London, Singapore and Dubai.

Finance, considered IIM-C’s stronghold, saw a manifold increase in the number of offers made compared to last year, with investment banks like Nomura, UBS, Deutsche Bank and HSBC picking up students from the institute.

It’s akin to a boxing match. On one side of the ring stand the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) backed by Prometric — the institute which implemented the computer-based Common Admission Test (CAT). On the other side of the ring are students who have the support of test-preparing institutes.

Both sides are sparring over the methodology used for the CAT scores which enable MBA aspirants get into the IIMs and other prominent B-schools. While the IIMs and Prometric maintain that the scores are fair to students, the other is not amused and is raising a “transparency” issue.

Over 20 right to information (RTI) applications have been filed across the country till date by students, and many more are expected, say students and faculty members of test-preparing institutes.

In its defence, Prometric has even put up a statement on the CAT IIM website: “We have reviewed the test scoring and we are completely confident that the results are appropriately distributed across the population, and that the test performed well within international standards. We are absolutely confident that the scores and rankings are accurate,” asserts Soumitra Roy of Prometric India. The statement added that candidate concerns will be addressed by Prometric’s candidate care centre.

But the student community is insisting that it wants “the IIMs and Prometric to come clean on the whole issue and be transparent”. “We want to know what action has been taken on people who had cheated and the database used to equate scores across different question sets,” said a student who has filed two RTI applications.

Prometric also states that the CAT test development process was conducted in alignment with the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. It adds that the content of the examination was developed and confirmed by individuals with high levels of expertise in each of three content domains — Verbal, Quantitative, and Data Interpretation. Post-administration analysis was conducted by “credentialed psychometricians to confirm the validity of the examination scores and to ensure that every candidate was provided a fair and equal opportunity to display their knowledge”.

“Candidates are not awarded inappropriate points for random guessing. This is a standard process in the testing industry and is a methodology employed in scoring similar admissions tests such as the Graduate Record Examination (GRE),” Prometric states.

“As would be expected with the more difficult CAT exam, no candidate answered 100 per cent of the items correctly and no candidate achieved the top theoretical score. The exam design accomplished the goal of identifying the top performing candidates who were, indeed, ranked at the top of the list. If the exam were designed to be substantially easier, it would be theoretically possible for a candidate to achieve a score of 450,” states Prometric in its defence.

Students and test-preparing institutes, however, are not backing out.

Source: www.business-standard.com

The Common Admission Test (CAT), which began in December, officially ended on Sunday with the Indian Institutes of Management declaring the scores of lakhs of candidates who took the entrance examination. Of the 2.41 lakh students who sat for the exam, 11 of them scored a perfect cent percentile; in absolute numbers, they all were marked close to 300 out of 450.

IIM-Ahmedabad convenor Satish Deodhar remained incommunicado. If some were happy with their absolute percentile , several students complained they were not.

Several students plan to file right to information (RTI) applications . “I expected to get a lot more that what I got. I am sure there was some problem with the assessment,” said a Chennai-based candidate. His feelings were shared by many. A heated discussion on students’ scores and their expectations was live all of Sunday on a popular MBA site, Pagalguy. Candidates also spoke of how they found it difficult to access CAT results. Scores were to be declared at 3 pm, but candidates could finally see their scorecards on the site only by 6 pm as the computer servers could not shoulder the traffic.

As reported earlier by TOI, IIMs did not give out call letters this time with the scores. As an admission chairman said, “We got the scorecards from IIM-A only on Saturday. We started processing all the information based on our selection criteria after that. We will give out call letters by either Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning.” IIM-A , which coordinated the CAT and also manages the admission for IIM-Shillong , put out the list of short-listed candidates , for both the campuses.

IIM-A has called 1,200 candidates for its 409 seats and IIMShillong has shorlisted 1,000 management aspirants.

Interestingly, IIM-A’s call letters only mentions a date for a personal interview; there was no clarity on whether the premier management institute had decided to do away with essay writing, a component it introduced when group discussion was done away with.

Source: www.economictimes.indiatimes.com

Landed at 99 percentile marks in CAT, yet no call from the ace-of-the-ace Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A)? Well, maybe it’s time to dig up your school transcripts.

The IIM-A this year has eased its CAT cutoff points to 99 percentile from last year’s 99.3 percentile largely due to the number of seats that has gone up from 315 to 417 this year. But the institute has also introduced a new benchmark: those who couldn’t manage 70% or more marks in their senior school certificate (SSC) or higher secondary school certificate (HSSC) would not be allowed into its hallowed portals regardless of their CAT scores.

IIM-A admissions chairperson Diptesh Ghosh told ET that until last year, the B-school had used the point-based system in shortlisting candidates for the second round. The academic record would be divided into bands, with each band given weightage while shortlisting a candidate. “This year, we have removed the complexity of the calculation and set a clear cutoff percentage of 70% for the two boards while shortlisting candidates,” he said.

So far, Ahmedabad seems to be the only one among the six IIMs to come up with this benchmark. The criterion applies only to general stream candidates.

In fact, IIM-A had introduced the criterion of academic brilliance for shortlisting a candidate last year, but had not specified the calculation clearly to the candidates. This year, for the first time, the institute spelt out a clear cutoff percentage in secondary and higher secondary marks for shortlisting candidates. There would not be any change in other selection processes that include essay writing and personal interview.

Different criteria at various IIMs

IIM-Bangalore has always put emphasis on academic record while selecting candidates for the flagship PGP, but it has never spelt out any cutoff marks.

The IIM-A move, that comes post the CAT results, could come in for criticism. At the reputed Maharaja Sayajirao University in Vadodara, vice-chancellor Ramesh Goyal said merit should be judged cumulatively.

“From an administrative point of view, academic criterion remains important in establishing the merit of a candidate. However, it is not necessary that a candidate who did not score good marks in class 10th or 12th should be excluded from competition considered for admission to a particular institute,” he told ET.

Different IIMs have different criteria for shortlisting candidates for the second round of admission, which include CAT percentile, work experience and extra-curricular activities. Until last year, IIM-Kozhikode put special emphasis on CAT scores for admission, giving it 90% weightage. This year, however, it has reduced the CAT weightage. IIM-Lucknow, on the other hand, has counted work experience as one of the major factors for shortlisting candidates.

CAT, which went online this year, was conducted over 10 days on the lines of the GRE and GMAT exams. This was meant to ensure uniform difficulty across the test span. However, candidates claimed that those appearing in the later phases got an unfair advantage over those taking the exam in the earlier slots. The IIMs, however, said uniformity was maintained with the use of psychometric analysis technique used elsewhere in the world.

Source: www.economictimes.indiatimes.com

The Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B) will refund the fees, around Rs 8 lakh, that students pay for their two-year Post Graduate Programme (PGP) if they take up a job in any non-profit entity (NGO) and work there for at least three years.

Students who work in an NGO for a year, too, could get a part-waiver of their fees.

IIM-B officials explained that the decision was taken because a number of students had expressed a desire to work with NGOs over the past few years but were concerned about their finances.

The IIM-B board of governors discussed the issue in a meeting in October 2009 and passed the proposal to take effect for the 2010 placement, starting March 4.

“We want our students to work in NGOs and even the government sector, where there is need for better management,” Pankaj Chandra, director of IIM-B told Business Standard.

The institute believes the move will encourage many of its students to gain a different kind of work experience, simultaneously helping people at the grassroots level.

“We have NGOs like Teach For India and Azim Premji Foundation coming to campus. We have had Narayana Hrudayalaya make a pre-placement talk to students,” said Sapna Agarwal, head of career development services at IIM-B.

The institute declined to explain how it was planning to make good the cost of the fee waiver.

Teach For India, one of the NGOs that made a presentation to final-year students at IIM-B, is looking to recruit students for its two-year Fellowship, which involves placing full-time teachers in low-income schools.

Shveta Raina, national head of fellowship research at Teach For India, said IIM-B’s fee refund was an encouraging initiative.

“For two years, our Fellows will get an opportunity to be trained in innovative methods. At the end of the two years, they can avail of our placement services. Companies like McKinsey, Mastek, Thermax and ICICI Bank are interested in hiring from us,” she said.

IIM-B and NGO officials admit that pay-wise, there would be quite a gap in the salaries offered in the corporate and social sector but say the exposure from such programmes would come in handy even if they choose to go back to the corporate sector after a short stint.

For instance, as a fellow at Teach For India, an IIM student could earn around Rs 23,000 a month including stipend, house and classroom allowance whereas companies typically pay IIM freshers between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 1.5 lakh a month.

Source: www.business-standard.com