How important is work experience for admission to the Indian Institutes of Management, the premier B-schools of the country, asked a student in a recent chat with Common Admission Test expert A K R S Srinivas, director of Triumphant Institute of Management Education, Mumbai.  

Srinivas' answer: It has some weightage. However, IIM Ahmedabad year has about 55 per cent freshers.

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Srinivas is an alumnus of IIM-Calcutta. He has an engineering degree in electronics and communication from Osmania University and has worked with Maruti Udyog [Get Quote] Limited in Gurgoan, Delhi and Kolkata before joining TIME, Hyderabad, as director of the CAT course. Teaching is his passion and he has been training students for CAT for the last 15 years.

Fot those of you who missed the chat, here is the transcript:

Part I: What is the admission criteria for the IIMs?

Rsh: Sir, Can I ask questions regarding the new PGPX at IIMA?

ARKS Srinivas: Yes, it is a one year programme for people with over seven years of work experience.

ST_: and also about the GD and PI. will the GD be with all candidates or only ST canditates.

ARKS Srinivas: Not necessarily.

rajiv: How good are IIT bombay and NItie and how much wightage they give to work experience ?

ARKS Srinivas: They are pretty good and come in the top 15 schools in the country.

srividhya: how many times we r eligible to attempt the cat exam

ARKS Srinivas: As of now any number of times.

sdjkd: hi xlar has cutoff..???

ARKS Srinivas: Yes, it does too.

MuthyalSAN: Hi Srinivas, can you please tell me the cutoff's for IIM's last year and the number of candidates the IIM totally select for the GD/ PI from CAT scores, so that I can get a rough idea of the percentile requirement?

ARKS Srinivas: Last year, QA - 10, DI - 11, VA - 16. Overall about 52 to 53 for CAT 2004.

Akhilesh: DO IIMs have seperate cut-offs for RC too? Can one get calls if one doesn't attempt RC but scores above the cut-off in the english usgae part?

ARKS Srinivas: No. Only section cut-offs exist. Also, there are a couple of IIMs which give weightage to very high overall score too.

Rajg: Hi Sir, I have a work experience of 4 years. Last year I took the CAT. I had 95+ percentile in DS & Quant. In Verbal, vocab/sentence questions do not trouble me, but in RC I have an accuracy of 30% only. Kindly suggest me what to do.Thanks.

ARKS Srinivas: The next 29 days, do at least five RC passages every day with a thorough analysis of the passages and questions.

lisa: sir i need to know to improve in DI should i do those in sample question papers or basic exercise ?coz i am really not ok in that section.

ARKS Srinivas: Spend time in revising what you have already done. Spend time on all the mock papers your have done till now. Also, take a sectional test every two days. It should help.

Abhinav: DO INSTITUTES LIKE SPJAIN, NITIE & MDI CONSIDER SECTIONAL CUT OFFS OR JUST THE OVERALL PERCENTILE? If you dont have the answer please tell me so...

ARKS Srinivas: SP Jain may not, others will.

jeet: what is generally the cutoff for NITIE?

ARKS Srinivas: Last year it was around the 96th percentile.

arun kumar: each section is divided into sub-sections, will the sub-section too have individual cutoff or is the cut off taken for whole section

ARKS Srinivas: No. It is taken for the whole section.

anuj: I AM B.COM GRADUATE FROM IGNOU CAN I GET ADMISSION IN ANY IIM THROUGH CAT.I AM ALSO DOEACC 'B' LEVEL PASS OUT

ARKS Srinivas: Yes Anuj, you can get into IIMs without a problem provided you clear the written test.

Surinder: How important is work experience to get in IIMs?

ARKS Srinivas: It has some weightage. IIM-Ahmedabad year has about 55 per cent freshers. You can judge from this!

rmdrao: I have two years work ex ..people are advisng me to stay away from Sybiosys, Bajaj etc... What wud you say ??

ARKS Srinivas: They are pretty good institutes. Please do apply, you can always reject it if you get better options to choose from.

CATaspirant: THIS IS THE THIRD TIME IAM ASKING MY QUESTION.Sir,I did not get a reply to my question.How do I improve my number of attempts in verbal/RC area?As of now iam able to attempt 20-25Q with an accuracy of 70% or so.I start with this area as I feel comfortable.I would lik to see an improvemant here.Could you kindly help me out?

ARKS Srinivas: Spend about 15 minutes in the VA area, try doing about 15 to 17 questions.

Then give about 30 minutes to RC; try doing a minimum of three passages.

That will make it to around 32 attempts. Do it for the next four weeks, the same will go upto 38 to 40 questions.

rajiv: Is there any wightage to the college u completed ur graduation amd organisation you are working in top b-schools

ARKS Srinivas: Yes, there could be.

trinity: Hi ARKS,,,could u please guide us as to how much would a percentile in 90%ile nearabouts in simcats transalate in the CAT???

ARKS Srinivas: Hi, I can talk about AIMCATs of TIME; 90 percentile would translate to around 93 to 94 percentile at least.

Abhinav: How is TAPMI & IMI Delhi for ppl with 2+ yrs work ex?

ARKS Srinivas: Both are good institutes.

shishya: sir plz tell me whether 98 percentile in mocks will translate to over 99 incat

ARKS Srinivas: Yes

rk: Sir ..finally ...i would like you to predict the CAT THIS YR ...DO U EXPECT ANY CHANGE OR ..THE 2 MKS WILL BE THERE OR NOT ...my gut feeling tells me there is goin to be a masssive change THATS where the iims can cut down many ...people and considering so many new entrants ...n stereotyped coaching classes i feel theres goin to be a huge change

ARKS Srinivas: Dear RK, the idea for the IIMs is to select good guys.

Anshul: Sir, I get scores of about 60-65 in prac-cats but am unable to clear cut-offs in English section. What should I do?

ARKS Srinivas: Spend a little more time on VA and RC section so that you get better marks in that. The trade off is you will get less in the other sections. But worth it to get into the IIMs.

 Part I: What is the admission criteria for the IIMs?

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