Joint effort

Ranchi, Jan. 18: Four new Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) — Ranchi, Raipur, Rohtak and Trichy — today agreed upon a common admission process for conducting group discussions and personal interviews of 3,000 successful CAT candidates jointly.

The decision was taken at a crucial meeting held at the Noida campus of IIM-Lucknow.

“We will send out call letters to a cumulative list of 3,000 CAT candidates who otherwise fulfil minimum cut-off marks for appearing in group discussions and personal interviews at the respective institutions. It is a start towards working together on many issues/fields in the future,” IIM-Ranchi director M.J. Xavier told The Telegraph over phone from Delhi.

The dates the group discussions and personal interviews have been also finalised. The first leg of scanning students through discussions and interviews would take place between February 28 and March 6 at Bangalore. It would be followed by similar processes between March 8 and March 13 at Mumbai, between March 15 and March 22 at Delhi, between March 26 and 30 in Calcutta and on April 2 at the four concerned IIMs.

The number of seats for postgraduate diploma in management (PGDM) programme has also been decided. While IIM-Ranchi would admit 70 students in the 2011 session against only 44 in 2010, its counterpart at Raipur and Trichy would admit 60 students each. Rohtak with better infrastructural facilities would admit 120 students this time.

“The present infrastructure at Suchana Bhavan and a portion of premises of the State Institute of Rural Development (SIRD) does not allow us to admit more students,” said Xavier. The state notified allocation of a portion of the SIRD campus for the use of IIM-Ranchi, which was earlier eyeing facilities at the Games village.

Today’s meeting at Noida was attended by Xavier, his Trichy counterpart Prafulla Agnihotri, IIM-Raipur director B. Sahay and IIM-Rohtak director P. Rameshan.

This joint exercise is expected to ease the stress of aspirants who otherwise would have had to hop from one interview to another. Besides, the new IIMs also did not want leftover candidates from the older IIMs.

Xavier said holding joint group discussions and personal interviews were just a beginning. “We are going to share resources in the field of IT and library, hold classes through video-conferencing, among many other things. It would be beneficial for each other,” the marketing guru said.