Wish to get into an IIM? Mind your language

WATCH HOW YOU SPEAK: IIM-B has revealed English will have a 5 per cent weightage in the final selection.

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Bangalore: Nihal Alva has every reason to be stymied. Like all his friends, Alva's been studying for the last year for the Common Admission Test (CAT) to try and get into one of the Indian Institutes of Management. And with IIM-Bangalore revealing that English will have a five per cent weightage in the final selection, Alva is doing everything he can to brush up on the queen's language.

“Some of the engineering students may focus on Math and may not be good in English. So it should not be the criteria,” says Nihal.

English language skills will be considered in a new component called the group discussion summary language score.

Passing the CAT itself accounts for 20 per cent of a student's score. Class X, XII and degree results account for 40 per cent. After the initial screening, the performance in the personal interview gets 20 per cent weightage. And group discussions and English skills account for the rest.

“The weightages we're using is based on our own research. Based on CAT applications and the performance of students we've selected every year, we get new information of students who've gone through the programme, their grade points and so on,” says Chairperson, Postgraduate programme, Prof Ganesh N Prabhu.

Nearly two lakh students will write CAT 2008 across 23 cities on Sunday. So call it an angrez hangover or call it the need of the hour. With corporates increasingly insisting on good spoken English when they recruit people, English has become important in B-Schools. And IIM-Bangalore has taken the first step by making it the selection criteria.