CRITERIA AND PROCESS FOR THE SELECTION OF THE CANDIDATES FOR INTERVIEW / 2nd STAGE OF IIMK PGP 2012-14

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IIM Kozhikode, every year use multiple criteria to shortlist and select the most suitable candidates for admission to the post graduate diploma programme. Such criteria are identified based on extensive analysis and involve inputs from the faculty of the institute as well as feedback from the recruiters about the aptitude and the skills sets required in a management student. Continuous feedback about the performance of students in the academic programme, their success in the placements and continued success in career are all inputs used to develop the criteria and the processes used in selection. IIMK has documented the process and made the component scores available to the candidates who were not short listed following transparent and logical methodologies derived based on analysis. At IIMK, there is an emphasis on selecting students who are able to cope with the very rigorous academic programme and fulfill the very high demands expected of them by the institute as well by the organizations who ultimately recruit them. It is the considered judgment of IIMK that consistent academic track record is a very important predictor of academic and professional success and it is this belief that prompted IIMK to assign weights to the academic performance in school and college in addition to CAT score. IIMK is looking for students who have done exceptionally well not only in CAT but throughout their studies. There are many candidates who clear the basic cutoffs , and among them those who have done consistently well throughout their studies are preferred. The first stage of short listing was based only on CAT score and here the cut-offs specified for each category is the minimum below which we have not considered a candidate for further process. There are a large number of candidates who qualify in stage 1. IIMK cannot possibly call all of them for interviews. So in the second round the following procedure was adopted for further short listing As mentioned in our admissions policy (extract): In stage 2, an index score is computed with 50 percent weight for the overall CAT score, 20 percent weight for academic performance in secondary school, 20 percent weight for higher secondary school and 10 percent to graduation. The academic performance of secondary school as well as higher secondary school is taken as the percentage of marks reported by the candidates and will be standardized [also across various categories (as per Government of Indias norm) well as HSC disciplines like arts and humanities, commerce, science and others] across the boards using the data available with IIMK for five years including the current year. At this stage the amount of work experience of the candidate has not been considered. (Note: A candidate who does not register online in stage 1 in totality i.e. both the personal data and academic data and later submit the form will not be considered for the interview process.)

The following is the process in which the all the four components constituting the index is computed: 1. CAT Index Score : IIMK used a linear scale to map the overall CAT percentile to a scale of 50. The highest possible percentile of all applicants to IIMK is mapped against 50 and the respective overall CAT percentile of each candidate is converted to the index score by dividing with the maximum percentile possible (i.e. 100) and multiplying by 50. 2. SSC Index: The academic performance is taken as the percentage of marks reported by the candidates and was standardized across the boards as well as categories (as per GOI norms) using the data available with IIMK for five years including the current year. Standardization is absolutely required to compare the performance of students from different boards and convert them to a common scale as different boards show different distribution of scores. One of the best and most commonly used solutions in statistics whenever data from different groups need to be compared is the standardization using the population mean and standard deviation to compute Z scores. Once Z scores are computed, they can be used to compare performance data across boards in academic performance. Z score represents how much away from the mean a particular student is for a given board. Positive values of Z score indicate above the mean performance (above average) and negative scores below the mean. Z scores also provide the scale considering the variability measured as standard deviation. Score is assigned to academic performance in SSC based on how much above the average a student is compared to other applicants in the corresponding SSC board who have applied to IIMK in a given category. Among the applicants if your performance is above average for a particular board, you will get a higher score. Z-score for a particular candidate i is calculated as follows: ( X i Bi ) Zi = Where Xi= score of i candidate being evaluated, Bi =

Bi

population mean estimate of the candidates belonging to SSC board (in a given category) from which i candidate belongs, whereas Bi is standard deviation estimate of the candidates belonging to SSC board (in a given category) from which i candidate belongs. If the Z-score of a candidate is less than or equal to zero i.e. below the average of candidates in the specific board, then these candidates have been assigned the minimum possible weight i.e. zero. If it is greater than or equal to 2 then the candidates is given highest weight in the component i.e. 20 in SSC. The range Z scores from 0 to 2 is decided based in the distribution of scores observed across the boards after standardization. If the Z score of candidate is in range of 0-2 the candidate marks is assigned using a linear transformation between the limits of 0 and 20.

In short a student who is 1.34 standard deviations above the population mean of a particular board, his Z score will be 1.34 and his corresponding component score for SSC will be 13.4. 3. HSC Index: The process of evaluating the HSC index remain the same as for the SSC index with an addition that the mean and standard deviation for a given board across various HSC disciplines like arts and humanities, commerce, science and others have been taken into account. Separate and were estimated and used in the computation of Z scores. 4. Graduation Index: As there as hundreds of different universities/ autonomous colleges across the country with many varied graduation subjects, weights were given for reasonably high performance with maximum capped at 65% between the limits of 0 for the minimum on a 10 scale. A candidate with 50% in aggregate gets 0 as the score. Also, any candidate above 65% gets maximum possible score i.e. 10. Score of any candidate within 50-65% is calculated as follows: Graduation Index = (Candidates percentage 50)*0.667 Here also the institute is looking at consistency and above a reasonable level of performance. 5. Total Index Score = CAT Index Score+ SSC Index Score +HSC Index Score+ Graduation Index Score In each category, the top ranking candidates based on this index score is called for personal interview process. Short listing is always relative, comparing a candidates performance and score to similar others who apply. If a student does not get short listed, it does not indicate an absolute rejection, but just that among all the applicants, there were many others with better performance and academic profiles. It is to be also understood that applicants to a premier management school like IIMK generally tend to have exceptionally high levels of academic accomplishments in respective boards and graduation along with a high CAT score.