XAT- Xavier Aptitude Test 2027
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With over 2.95 Lakhs CAT 2025 applications this year and out of which 2.58 lakh students took the CAT 2025 exam. Candidates are now curious about how many students get selected in IIMs. Since IIMs are considered to be the most prestigious management institutes in the country. The number of students aiming for the IIMs every year is more than 2 lakh. However, the IIMs only select a handful of candidates, i.e. approximately 8000. Among these 5500 IIM seats, a great number of seats are reserved for the candidates who belong to the reserved categories. This makes the competition for IIM seats more fierce.
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The IIM acceptance rate for candidates is very low. From around 2 lakh candidates appearing for the CAT exam, only a few thousand are shortlisted for the PI round. The finally selected candidates are very few. The total number of candidates selected in each IIM varies as per the batch size of the respective IIM. The seat matrix for different IIMs is given in the table below.
Name of the IIM | Total candidates selected | Total General candidates | Total EWS candidates | Total OBC candidates | Total SC candidates | Total ST candidates | Total PWD Students |
404 | 189 | 9 | 101 | 56 | 29 | 20 | |
523 | 201 | 53 | 137 | 78 | 38 | 16 | |
- | - | - | - | - | - | - | |
507 | 194 | 51 | 135 | 77 | 39 | 11 | |
- | - | - | - | - | - | - | |
489 | 204 | 33 | 133 | 73 | 35 | 11 | |
231 | 97 | 38 | 62 | 30 | 4 | 0 | |
356 | 163 | 45 | 76 | 42 | 21 | 9 | |
323 | 137 | 36 | 85 | 49 | 16 | - | |
430 | 161 | 42 | 113 | 63 | 32 | 19 | |
439 | 238 | 33 | 88 | 46 | 23 | 11 | |
248 | 80 | 24 | 81 | 37 | 22 | 4 | |
346 | 140 | 36 | 93 | 53 | 23 | 1 | |
- | - | - | - | - | - | - | |
301 | 123 | 30 | 81 | 45 | 22 | 0 | |
400 | 300 | 40 | - | 42 | 9 | 9 | |
281 | 104 | 43 | 75 | 47 | 12 | - | |
- | - | - | - | - | - | - | |
324 | 127 | 32 | 85 | 48 | 25 | 7 |
The IIM Selection criteria for candidates aspiring to pursue any of the offered MBA/PGDM programs are listed below.
A candidate must have a Bachelor's degree with at least 50% marks or equivalent CGPA (45% in case of reserved categories).
Candidates must have a valid CAT scorecard.
The candidate should mandatorily qualify for the CAT cutoff specified by the respective IIM to send an application.
Candidates shortlisted for the PI round are evaluated based on their performance in the different tests. Apart from that, the overall profile of a candidate is also given significant weightage.
IIMs have prescribed reservation criteria for different categories of candidates. The OBC category has a 27% reservation quota, while the SC and ST categories have 7.5% and 15% respectively. 10% of seats are reserved for the EWS and 5% for the PwD candidates. The distribution of seats in the IIMs is provided in the table below.
Category | Category-wise Distribution of IIM Seats |
General | 3500 |
OBC | 809 |
SC and ST | 538 |
PwD and EWS | 550 |
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
It is estimated that approximately 8000 students are admitted to the 21 IIMs in India each year to pursue their MBA/PGDM programs.
Getting admission in both IIMs and IITs is tough as both conduct one of the toughest entrance exams in India.
A 70-80 percentile in the CAT exam will be considered a moderate score. Although the candidate will be above average.
The seats across all the IIMs are approximately 5500. The seats are an individual IIM depending on the batch size issued for the particular academic session.
From over 2 lakh CAT applicants, around 10,000 candidates get shortlisted for the PI rounds of an IIM. The final number of selected candidates in IIM is around 5500.
Out of the total CAT-qualified candidates only 10-15% are shortlisted for the PI rounds. After the PI rounds are conducted along with other evaluation tests, only around 2% of the applicants receive the final admission letter from IIMs across the nation.
The selection rate of all the IIMs combined comes to be less than 3% (approximately 2.17%). This is the selection rate for over 2 lakh candidates appearing for the CAT exam and the candidates finally making it to an IIM.
On Question asked by student community
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