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	No. of Students who choose IIM Ahmedabad as their CAT preference	No. of Candidates shortlisted for Interview Round	No. of students with Final Offer	Waitlist Movement
General	118214	683	207	10
EWS	6469	37	8	0
NC - OBC	32309	344	131	21
SC	13771	182	95	30
ST	3572	110	44	0
PWD	807	44	20	3

IIM Bangalore

Category	No. of Candidates shortlisted for Interview Round	No. of students with Final Offer	Waitlist Movement
General	681	225	63
EWS	158	45	0
NC - OBC	430	150	25
SC	274	80	16
ST	141	50	15
PWD	58	10	12

IIM Calcutta

Category	Sanctioned Intake	No. of Shortlisted Candidates	No. of Candidates with Final Admission Offer
General	233	789	415
EWS	9	60	17
NC - OBC	130	386	233
SC	72	406	128
ST	105	213	105

IIM Kozhikode

Category	No. of Students who choose IIM Kozhikode as their CAT preference	No. of Candidates shortlisted for Interview Round	No. of students with Final Offer
General	107389	1800	710
EWS	6202	350	91
NC - OBC	30065	1200	453
SC	17340	750	268
ST	12460	300	175
PWD	3154	100	89

IIM Indore

Details of 2022-24 Batch
	General	EWS	NC-OBC	SC	ST	PwD	Total
Sanctioned Intake	227	19	131	73	37	20	507
Shortlisted	1716	196	1243	816	481	144	4596
Shortlisting CS cutoff	67.25	59.01	58.00	50.69	31.55	21.05	NA
Seats filled	227	20	136	76	39	10	508

IIM Ranchi

Details of 2021-23 Batch
	General	EWS	NC-OBC	SC	ST	PwD	Total
Sanctioned Intake	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	250
Shortlisted	6560	1182	3497	1855	480	NA	13574
Seats filled	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA

IIM Trichy

Details of 2022-24 Batch
	General	EWS	NC-OBC	SC	ST	PwD	Total
Sanctioned Intake	146	36	97	54	27	NA	360
Shortlisted (CAP)	8998	1869	5493	3232	1064	223	20879
CAP CAT %ile cutoff	92	70	74	54	40	40	NA

IIM Udaipur

Details of 2022-24 Batch
	General	EWS	NC-OBC	SC	ST	PwD	Total
Sanctioned Intake	129	32	86	48	24	16	335
Shortlisted (CAP)	8998	1869	5493	3232	1064	223	20879
CAP CAT %ile cutoff	92	70	74	54	40	40	NA
Seats filled	137	36	94	69	12	1	349

IIM Kashipur

Details of 2022-24 Batch
	General	EWS	NC-OBC	SC	ST	PwD	Total
Sanctioned Intake	113	24	65	36	18	8	264
Shortlisted (CAP)	8998	1869	5493	3232	1064	223	20879
CAP CAT %ile cutoff	92	70	74	54	40	40	NA
Seats filled	89	29	67	47	25	0	257

IIM Nagpur

Details of 2022-24 Batch
	General	EWS	NC-OBC	SC	ST	PwD	Total
Sanctioned Intake	97	24	65	36	18	12	240
Shortlisted	975	270	830	554	166	54	2849
Seats filled	101	30	68	37	14	3	253

IIM Amritsar

Details of 2022-24 Batch
	General	EWS	NC-OBC	SC	ST	PwD	Total
Sanctioned Intake	119	30	83	45	23	NA	300
Shortlisted	9238	527	3579	1645	732	183	15904
Seats filled	137	13	68	37	1	0	256

For the students seeing their names 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 to 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.