Do New And Baby IIMs Prefer Freshers? Numbers Reveal The Truth

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Every year, close to 2 Lakhs candidates appear for the Common Admission Test (CAT) to compete for admission into one of the 20 IIMs. However, out of them, roughly 3600 students manage to get through, taking the count to a minuscule 0.018%.

Clearly, the process of getting into an IIM is highly competitive, and only the best of the best manage it. While the older IIMs have their individual criteria for admission, nine new and baby IIMs conduct admission through a Common Admission Process (CAP).

Is Work Experience Important In IIM CAP?

In the personal interview round, work experience exists as a criterion, but its weightage is not clearly defined.

As a result, candidates face a lot of uncertainty while preparing for the interview round. Is it mandatory to have work experience to crack the Common Admission Process? How much experience is considered enough?

Questions like these remain unanswered, even as they come up each year with every new batch entering the gates of the prestigious institutes.

With the hope that aspirants can get a clearer picture regarding the importance of work experience in IIM admissions, we dug out the latest work experience stats* of 9 institutes in the IIM family that admit candidates through the Common Admission Process (CAP).

What did we find? Check it out below.

*All data in this article have been sourced from the official placement reports/brochures of IIMs.

Key Findings

• The new and baby IIMs have a strong tendency to admit freshers without prior work experience; Freshers at IIM Bodh Gaya 2020-22 batch were the highest at 74%.
• Experience under six months is not considered in IIM admission, and as a result, several IIMs released the stats of candidates with 0 to 12 months of experience instead of freshers.
• The number of candidates with more than 3-4 years of experience is consistently low across all the new and baby IIMs.
• At IIM Kashipur the number of students with more than 3 years of experience was only 4%, while IIM Trichy had only 4% students with 4 years or more of work experience.
  
  

Latest Work Experience Records In New & Baby IIMs

1. IIM Udaipur

Since its inception in 2015, IIM Udaipur has admitted a healthy pool of freshers every year. According to the data released by the institute, the average work experience of 2nd-year students at IIM-U stood at 27 months. For the first-year students, the average work experience was 34 months.

• 41% of the 318 students in the 2nd-year have zero work experience.
• 9% of the students in the 2nd year had work experience of up to 12 months.
• 19% of the students had work experience between 12 to 24 months while 18% had more than 2-3 years of experience.
• Only 13% of students had more than 3 years of work experience.

2. IIM Ranchi

The latest available data on work experience statistics at IIM Ranchi revealed that more than 40% of the batch were freshers. Compared to the other new and baby IIMs, the Jharkhand-based institute has a consistent record of preferring freshers in large numbers.

• In the 2019-2021 MBA batch, 41.4% of the students had no work experience at all!
• 16.3% of the students had work experience of up to 12 months, whereas 14.4% had between 1 and 2 years of work experience.
• 20.7% of the students in the 2019-2022 MBA batch came with a work experience of up to 3 years, while only 7.2% had more than 3 years of experience.

3. IIM Raipur

Established in 2010, IIM-Raipur also has a healthy track record of preferring freshers every year. According to the latest available data, the average work experience of the 2017-2019 batch stood at 27 months. A detailed breakdown of the experience profile has been given below.

• 41% of the students in the 2017-19 batch were freshers with 0 to 11 months of work experience.
• Around 25% had 12-23 months of work experience.
• 24% of the students in the 2017-19 batch had work experience up to 3 years.
• Only 10% of students from the 2017-19 batch at IIM Raipur had more than 3 years of work experience.

4. IIM Sambalpur

IIM Sambalpur also recorded a good number of freshers in the 2020-22 batches across different programs. With a batch strength of 156, the institute noted that 78 students were either freshers or had less than one year of work experience in the industry.

• 50% of the students across all programs in the 2020-22 batch had work experience between 0 to 12 months.
• 22.4% of the students had work experience of 12 to 24 months.
• About 16.7% of the students came with work experience of up to 3 years - i.e. 36 months.
• Only 10.9% of the students had worked in the industry for more than 3 years.

5. IIM Bodhgaya

The MBA batch of 2019-21 had the largest (till then) batch size with 109 students enrolled. Among all the new and baby IIMs, Bodhgaya recorded the largest number of freshers intake with close to 81 students out of 109 having no work experience at all.

• 74% of the 2019-20 batch were freshers with zero work experience.
• 19% of the students in the 2019-20 MBA batch had work experience of up to 2 years.
• Only 7% of the students at IIM Bodh Gaya had more than 2 years of work experience.

6. IIM Sirmaur

Located in the hilly town of Sirmaur in Himachal Pradesh, IIM-S also has a good track record of preferring freshers. In the 190-strong 2020-22 batch, the average work experience stood at 26 months. Nearly 99 students in the batch were freshers.

• 52% of the 2020-22 batch (across all 2-years programs) were freshers with no work experience. 
• Only 6% of the students had work experience of 1 to 12 months.
• The work experience of 15% of the students was between 12 to 24 months.
• Another 15% out of the 190 students in the 2020-22 batch had work experience between 24 to 36 months.
• Only 12% of the students had more than 3 years of experience in the industry.

7. IIM Jammu

Like IIM Bodh Gaya, IIM Jammu also took in a huge number of freshers in the 2020-22 MBA batch. Close to 150 students in the 228 strong MBA batch at IIM Jammu were freshers. In fact, the average work experience of the batch was only 8.46 months.

• A huge 65.79% of students in the 2020-22 MBA batch had no work experience at all.
• 7.46% of the students had work experience between 1 to 12 months.
• 8.77% of the students had between 12 to 24 months of work experience in the industry.
• Comparatively, the number of students with work experience between 24 to 36 months stood at 12.72%.
• Only 5.26% of the students had more than 36 months of work experience.

8. IIM Kashipur

The data from the 2020-22 batch at IIM Kashipur also showed an uptick in the trend of preferring freshers. Out of a total of 279 students in the 2020-22 MBA batch at IIM Kashipur, as many as 122 students were freshers. The average work experience of the batch stood at 28 months.

• 43% of the students in the 2020-22 MBA batch were freshers with no experience.
• 11% of the students in the batch had work experience between 1 to 12 months.
• 18% of the students had between 12 to 24 months of work experience.
• 25% of the students in the 2020-22 batch had work experience of 2 to 3 years (24 to 36 months).
• Only 3% of the students had more than 3 years of work experience (i.e. above 36 months).

9. IIM Trichy

In the 2019-21 PGDM batch at IIM Trichy, around 71 students had an average work experience of zero to 12 months. Compared to the other new and baby IIMs, the record of preferring freshers at IIM Trichy is significantly lower.

• 31% of the 2019-21 PGDM batch had a work experience of up to 12 months (less than 1 year).
• 20% of the batch had a work experience record of between 12 to 23 months.
• 31% had a work experience of 2 to 3 years (i.e between 24 to 36 months).
• Close to 14% of the batch had worked in the industry for a period ranging between 3 to 4 years.
• Only 4% had more than 48 months (i.e. 4 years) of work experience in the industry.

Conclusion

Even though work experience is an important criterion for IIM admissions, new and baby IIMs have a tendency to prefer freshers in large numbers. As is evident from the data presented above, IIM Trichy had the lowest number of freshers at 31%. Therefore, the lower limit for fresher’s intake at the new and baby IIMs is at least 30%, although there might be variations from year to year.

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