IIM Nagpur CAT Cutoff: Previous-Year Minimums

Nagpur's latest published criteria use CAT 2025 for MBA 2026-28. The stage-one screening percentiles were:

Every CAT section also needed a positive score. A General candidate with 96 overall but 68 in QA would miss the historical sectional floor. Conversely, meeting all four percentile conditions only opened the next application stage; it did not secure an interview.

The policy planned a 340-student batch for 2026-28. That is a historical intake figure, not a confirmed 2027-29 seat count. This guide concerns the full-time residential MBA, not Nagpur's Executive or Blended MBA programmes.

The CAT cutoff guide explains why an initial eligibility floor is different from a final offer score. Nagpur considered the applicant's profile after the first CAT screen.

Application, PI Shortlist and Interview Venues

Candidates who cleared the CAT screen were contacted to fill Nagpur's application. The form required Class 10, Class 12/diploma and graduation records, including semester/year-wise marks, plus applicable work, category, EWS and disability documents.

Submitting that form on time was a pre-interview requirement, not a PI call. Any missing or mismatched information compared with the CAT application had to be flagged. Only completed applications moved into profile-based shortlisting.

The shortlist used CAT and the academic, work and gender details in the application. Shortlisted candidates then confirmed PI participation and supplied venue preferences.

The listed venues were Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and the IIM Nagpur campus. Applicants had to choose at least three different centres in preference order. Final allocation depended on slot availability; the first choice was not guaranteed. Interviews had forenoon and afternoon sessions.

A brief extempore could form part of PI: the panel supplied a topic with short preparation and speaking time. It was not described as a separate, universally timed written test. Relevant original academic, reservation, work and professional certificates were required at PI; missing originals could disqualify a candidate.

Final Selection Weights and Academic Ratings

After PI, Nagpur prepared separate category rankings using these weights:

The CAT component used (candidate's total CAT score / highest total CAT score among stage-one eligible candidates) x 10. The denominator was not the paper's maximum possible marks or the candidate's percentile. The PI score, including any extempore, was also converted to a 0-10 scale.

Class 10 and Class 12 shared one rating scale; graduation differed in the middle bands:

School percentages included all subjects shown on the marksheet, even if the board used a smaller selection to calculate its percentage. For example, 80% in Class 12 earned rating five, while a score above 80% and up to 90% earned nine. Graduation at 75% earned six, not the school rating of five.

The academic subsection assigns 1%, 2% and 3% to ratings A, B and C respectively, within the six-percent academic component. The overall policy also refers to suitable normalisation. These published ratings are useful for comparing profiles; they do not supply every step needed to reproduce an official final score independently.

The CAT contribution, PI, academics and work are distinct from the two diversity components. The IIM selection criteria should therefore be compared institute by institute rather than applying one college's composite formula to another.

Work-Experience Bands and Business Proof

Eligible duration was counted in completed months up to 31 January 2026. The work rating was out of ten and entered a component weighted at 9%:

The peak was 18-24 months. At 25 months the rating fell to seven, and from 36 months it became zero. A ten-point work rating should not be described as ten extra percentage points in the final selection score.

Only paid, full-time post-graduation work qualified. The exclusions covered part-time work, projects, internships, pre-qualification work, CA/ICWA(CMA)/CS articleship, standalone training, fellowships, unpaid or stipend-based pre-graduation work, and jobs paid in cash or through UPI apps. Training within an eligible job was counted, which is different from an excluded standalone training placement.

Employment proof included appointment dates, relieving or experience certificates and salary/payment evidence, to be submitted at programme registration.

For self-employment, partnership or an owned start-up, the institute required income-tax returns for the relevant years or the assessment year preceding CAT registration, plus at least two applicable records from this list:

• Registered partnership deed
• MCA/RoC firm registration certificate
• GST registration
• Firm PAN card
• Audited accounts for at least two continuous financial years
• Firm bank statement
• Statutory auditor appointment letter
• Purchase or work orders for the claimed period
• MSME certificate, where applicable
• DIPP recognition certificate, where applicable

At least one supporting document had to identify the firm, its registration number and the candidate as promoter/director. The other had to show the firm name or registration number. The later of the two document dates established the start of self-employment, and both dates had to follow award of the qualifying degree.

Diversity Points and Offer Verification

A non-engineering bachelor's degree earned an academic-diversity rating of ten, used in the 5% component. Female and transgender candidates received a gender-diversity rating of ten; male candidates received zero in the 10% gender component.

These were separate components. Unlike policies that allow only one diversity award, Nagpur's published formula included both. The degree condition concerned the bachelor's qualification, so a later non-engineering postgraduate degree should not automatically be substituted for it.

Offers were provisional until the relevant information was verified. If a mismatch changed the final score, the institute reassessed eligibility across the earlier stages too. A candidate who no longer cleared a stage could lose the offer even after appearing for PI.

For a score-changing discrepancy, the policy provided for refund of the acceptance fee after administrative charges. Fraud or deliberate misrepresentation had a separate no-refund rule. These two situations should not be treated as identical.

The designated offer sender was admissions-do-not-reply@iimnagpur.ac.in. The policy stated that offers would not be communicated by phone or another email sender.

Acceptance Payment and Withdrawal Rules

The offer-acceptance amount was INR 1 lakh, adjusted against Term 1. Candidates still had to pay the remaining term fee and register by their communicated deadlines. Missing the balance-payment or registration deadline could cancel admission and forfeit the acceptance/term amount.

The 2026-28 refund policy used 12 July 2026, 9 AM as the registration boundary:

After-registration withdrawals were handled by the PGP Office, with incharge-academic@iimnagpur.ac.in listed for guidance. Merely not joining was not the same as submitting a timely withdrawal request.

The policy proposed an expression-of-interest commitment fee for waitlisted candidates but did not specify its amount on this page. The CAT admission process includes institute-specific offer and waitlist instructions; it does not provide a common acceptance payment for all IIMs.

Cutoffs and Meritscreening, interviews and score weights Profile and Offerswork, diversity and refunds

1. Previous-Year Category Cutoffs
2. Application and PI Sequence
3. Merit and Academic Reference

1. Work and Self-Employment Reference
2. Diversity and Verification
3. Payment and Refund Reference