Two graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay among 10 toppers

Updated on: Thursday, January 10, 2013

Engineers have yet again emerged as the champions of the anxiety-striking Common Admission Test (CAT) that opens doors to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). Results declared on Wednesday reveal that of the 1.9 lakh candidates who wrote the examination last year, 10 achieved scores in the 100 percentile . Nine of these toppers were engineers and two are graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay .

The financial capital fared better than other major cities. Nearly 17,000 candidates from Mumbai took the test in 2012 as against 21,224 from New Delhi and 19,553 from Bangalore . But among those who achieved scores in the 99 percentile and above, Mumbai's share was 180—ahead of Delhi's 168 and Bangalore's 157.

This time, about 19 candidates scored in the 99.99 percentile and also, impressively , 1,895 candidates scored in between 99 and 100 percentiles . On Wednesday, these aspirants celebrated their feat and began the wait for call letters from IIMs.

Engineers' achievements in CAT-2012 were the starkest. Of the 10 candidates with scores in the perfect 100 percentile, eight hailed from IITs and five are in their final year of graduation . Moving down the charts, 79.36% of the 1,885 who secured places in the 99 and 99.99 percentiles are male engineers.

While the 2012 results evidenced the continuing domination of male engineers in the CAT, they also displayed that women non-engineers feature the least among the toppers. Merely four women engineers from Karnataka, Orissa, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh scored in the 99.99 percentile. In all, 255 girls and 1,640 boys scored in over 99 percentile.

Reflecting on the results, Prafulla Agnihotri, director of IIM-Tiruchirappalli , said, "There has been talk of relooking at CAT's format. The deliberations are at a preliminary stage. We want to make CAT more inclusive, so that students from other streams are not at a competitive disadvantage ." The overhaul, he added, may take a year or more.

N Ravichandran, director IIM-Indore , said that although the CAT is a major input for admission, several other factors come into play before a student is taken into IIM.

Nevertheless, in the 2012 examination, engineers held sway, while candidates from most other disciplines had to remain happy with near-perfect scores. The highest score of a candidate from medicine background stood in the 99.97 percentile and that of an aspirant from economics stream was in the 99.94 percentile.

Out of the pool of architects who took the test, 11.8% were in the 95 percentile or above, while 6.8% of engineers fell in that range. This could be explained by the fact that far more engineers than architects try to crack the exam.

In all, 1.91 lakh candidates appeared in the 21-day-long testing window from October 11 to November 6, 2012, for admission to the 13 IIMs. The institutes have held back the result of a student for feigning to be two different people with a slight change in the name.

For students, the wait to access the result on Wednesday was prolonged as the rush slowed down the CAT website. Apart from the IIMs, the CAT scores are accepted by 158 Bschools , including all the management colleges attached to the Indian Institutes of Technology . The CAT scores are valid till December 2013, allowing international management schools to also accept students on the basis of their marks in the CAT.

Two graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay among 10 toppers

More Education news