CMI-Chennai Mathematical Institute

The admission procedure is very complicated, ever-varying, secretive, and never revealed. So none of us clearly know (or are supposed to know). More senior students might have gathered a wealth of hearsay, but none of it is certain.

There are mystical (and contradicting) stories of research scholars setting and checking papers and profs double-checking them and tweaking questions to suit the standards of CMI. But no one really knows how the testing is created or graded.

The most information I have known someone to get from an official source is how far away from the without-interview cut off they were (it was some single-digit number). The student asked this in response to the interview call and eventually got in via interview.

The interviews are an even bigger mystery. We don't even know what they grade us on, how, or whether there are grades or points or any other system.

And now I will tell you why the cutoff is not important to know beforehand.

The top US universities that all CMI grads aspire and apply to have no set score requirements. They take a battery of test scores and a host of essays and statements to judge a student, at any level. In fact, most top educational institutions around the world know that one score is not enough to judge students. Within the Indian educational system, a more comprehensive entrance system is hard to implement, which is why places like CMI offer multiple entrance channels and give opportunities for the interview to students on the borderline of the test/Olympiad performance cut off.

Best of luck.