IIM Waitlist Movement: Meaning & Past Trends

We all know the euphoria of young aspirants to seek admissions in the IIMs. Students work round the clock throughout the year to meet CAT cut offs to secure a seat in MBA/PGDM programmes of these prestigious institutes. But not all of them get success in getting admission there. Some in fact come very close to getting seat but don’t because of the huge wait list.

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Even though many students qualify for IIMs WAT-GD/PI round and clear it too, but because their composite score for final selection is less than a few others, they miss the chance.

What is IIM selection process?

The selection process of all the Indian Institute of Managements is rigorous and in order to clear the brain hammering process, students require a lot of preparation. Some IIMs have Group Discussion as an integral aspect of selection process while some like the IIM Ahmedabad do not conduct GD. They in place of it have the Analytical Writing Test (AWT) or Written Ability Test (WAT) Let us check out the selection process of IIMs.

IIMs will observe a two-step process for selection process of the candidates for admission to the 2020-22 batch of the PGP. These steps are-

Based on the CAT Exam 2019 score, minimum cut offs in the sectional percentile ranks, the overall percentile rank is selected for the subsequent stages.

Candidates get shortlisted for AWT/WAT/GD & Personal Interview (PI)

In the final selection stage, selection is strictly based on the shortlisting of the candidates done separately for each category (General/SC/ST/NC-OBC/PwD) based on the Final Composite Score’s (FCS).

What is IIM Waitlist Movement?

Every year, there is a lot of buzz among different students forums related to IIM waitlist. So what is this waitlist movement? Let’s understand.

Waitlist Movement

Every year, lakhs of students apply for admission to MBA programmes offered by the IIMs. Since, the total number of seats of all 20 IIMs is about 4000, not everyone gets successful. Once the first list of selected candidates are announced, another batch of selected students are kept in waiting in case any student chooses to forgo their seat. The seat is then offered to the next best candidate. This list of students waiting for someone to give up their seat can be termed as waitlist.

IIM waitlist mainly consists of the number of seats that move up from the waitlist slab to offer. Each year’s observation shows, students wait long for the waitlist of IIM Ahmedabad (IIMA), IIM Bangalore (IIMB) and IIM Calcutta (IIMC) to move so that the chances of their admission get brighter. Nevertheless, the new and emerging IIM waitlist movement has also caught attention lately.

The waitlist movement in IIMs and some few top MBA colleges is category dependent. For the general category, it is extremely stringent, while for the SC, ST, OBC and PwD category there is some relaxation.

IIM Lucknow does not release waitlist. They instead of it release the merit list. For a student to secure their position in the merit list, they need to qualify the minimum requirement which is 12 out of 40 in the PI round.

Highlights of PAST Trends of the IIM Waitlist

Except for the admission teams of individual IIMs, one cannot perhaps give accurate data on the waitlist movement. However, based on the data published in various online platforms such as blogs, student-answering platforms, we have mentioned below the past trends of waitlist movement of both Old, New, and Emerging IIMS in the past two years. Take a look.

IIM Ahmedabad

Category	Waitlist Statistics
General	37
NC OBC	36

IIM Bangalore

Category	Waitlist Statistics
General	108
NC OBC	63
SC	49

IIM Calcutta

Category	Waitlist Statistics
General	102
NC OBC	134
SC	72
ST	72

IIM Kozhikode

Category	Waitlist Statistics
General	186
OBC	209
SC	135

IIM Indore

Category	Waitlist Statistics
General	776
OBC category	580

IIM Ranchi

Category	Waitlist Statistics
General	1164
OBC	423
SC	460
ST	161
PwD	135

IIM Trichy

Category	Waitlist Statistics
General	931
OBC	382
SC	189
ST	107

IIM Udaipur

Category	Waitlist Statistics
General Category	1911
OBC	780
SC	526
ST	76

IIM Kashipur

Category	Waitlist Statistics
General category	1615
NC OBC	525
SC	269
ST	115

IIM Nagpur

Category	Waitlist Statistics
General	218
OBC	293
SC	201
ST	15

IIM Amritsar

Category	Waitlist Category
General	616
OBC	188
SC	75
ST	21

For the students seeing their name on the IIM waiting list is an unsettling situation. However, this also implies that the IIM selection committee thinks these candidates on the list to be strong. One thing about the waitlist is at least they can still hope to get admission in their dream institute. But, we recommend students keep a backup plan and keep chasing their aspirations.

Note: We have extracted the data of past trends of waitlist movement from third-party sources. If you know something related to past trends, you may share it with us.