Hello Aspirant!

Regarding your question, the good news is that your CAT marks aren't contingent on your performance in 10,12 Board exams and college exams. Also, if you do well in CAT, you can get into a good management school with 90% above, hopefully an IIM.

All the best! Prepare well

Praveen, CAT is the entrance examination for all the 20 IIMs and as many as 1000 participating Management Institutions. So if we are talking about IIMs,  IIMs shortlist candidates for the interview stage based on their own criteria, which may be independent of each other. The process may include Written Ability Test, Group Discussion, and Personal Interviews. Performance in the CAT examination is an important component in the admission process. IIMs may additionally use other factors such as the previous academic performance of the candidates, relevant work experience, gender and academic diversity and other similar inputs in shortlisting and ranking of candidates at various stages of the admission process. The processes, academic cut-offs and the weights allocated to the evaluation parameters may vary across IIMs. So with an aggregate of 53-55% in your 10th and 12th, it is tad difficult for IIMs even if you score 95 percentile because the Academic profile does carry weightage. But there might be Top B schools that you can have decent shot at of you do score 90 percentile. And once you complete your MBA from any top Management school, placements will never be an issue.