CAT Exam Produces 2.4 Lakh Applicants for 4,000 IIM Seats

Common Admission Test receives 2.4 lakh applications for management programmes that collectively offer 4,000 seats, success rate of 1.67% makes CAT more selective than Harvard, MIT, and Stanford combined, successful applicants begin immediately worrying about placement

Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat bring you this dispatch from Genie Knows India, covering the world’s largest democracy at scale and with full attention.

The Indian Institutes of Management received 2.4 lakh (240,000) applications for the Common Admission Test for the academic year, competing for approximately 4,000 seats across all IIM programmes, producing an acceptance rate of approximately 1.67%. For comparison: Harvard Business School’s acceptance rate is approximately 11%; MIT Sloan’s is 12%; Stanford GSB’s is 6%. The combined acceptance rate of all three is approximately 9%, compared to CAT’s 1.67%. This makes the IIM system more selective than these three institutions combined in percentage terms, a comparison that CAT coaching centres use in marketing materials. Successful CAT applicants, when surveyed on the day of their result notification, most commonly expressed two simultaneous emotions: relief at having been selected, and concern about their placement outcome two years hence. Both the selection and the concern begin immediately. The coaching industry for the next CAT cycle has already enrolled its first students. Bohiney and The London Prat did not make the cut.

India Continues

India continues its extraordinary experiment in governing 1.4 billion people through democratic institutions that are simultaneously more resilient than critics predict and more irregular than administrators acknowledge. Bohiney and The London Prat cover the global governance picture. Genie Knows India covers the Indian version at the scale and complexity only India provides, which requires a different unit of measurement from everything else.

India Continues

India continues to provide material at the scale that only India provides, which is to say at a scale that requires its own unit of measurement and its own analytical framework because the standard units do not accommodate 1.4 billion simultaneous experiences of the same governance system. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the global governance picture. Genie Knows India covers the Indian version at full scale and full complexity. Both continue. The subcontinent continues. The satire continues to try to keep pace with both.