IIM Lucknow - Indian Institute of Management Answered Questions

Going for MBA can have two directions, one you can pursue MBA as a fresher and work or two you gain some work experience and later, figure out what to do. If you want to go the first way, I believe you should appear for CAT 19/20, and check what is your current status compared to other aspirants around the country. It will give you a rough idea of where you stand. You have around 5 months which is good enough for you to prepare. If it doesn't work, you can get some experience a year or two and then try for CAT once simultaneously. So basically its a question you need to ask yourself. But whatever it is, I would recommend you to definitely appear for CAT 19.

IIM-Lucknow cut-off is around 97 percentile and if you are an OBC category student then you can get a call at 94 percentile also.
Now, what are your chances? It depends on your preparation for CAT. If you are preparing daily and in the right way then you have 100% chance as you have 7 or more months before the exam which is plenty. Prepare properly for GD/PI and get into one of the IIMs.

Hello Arpita, First of all yes it may increase your chances to get a call from IIMs but it also depends on how well your personal interview was. Sometimes even after scoring well in CAT many students fail to prepare well for their interview before they gets selected in IIM. They have very tough interview rounds and it takes a lot of practice and confidence to crack such interviews. You can see videos of interview preparations for CAT interviews. It may give you a brief idea about it.

The minimum percentile is dependent on the category one belongs to. The first shortlisting is done roughly on the basis of category for all the students. The academic diversity helps one while calculating the composite score at the end of second round. The composite score is calculated for everyone with extra points for non engineering students. For IIM Lucknow, 5 point weight is given for non engineers this year and for Amritsar, Kashipur and Sirmaur, it is somewhat similar. So if you are a non engineer and you clear the cutoff, you will get a good edge over that engineer with similar profile. But there is not much difference in the cutoff based on academic diversity.

Hi Rakshanda,
Questions will most probably be asked about your gap period such, as why you no went for job, how did you utilize your time then, and more. These are asked to understand your thought process and clarity, and till the time you know it well, you are good to go. All the best.