My cousin recently got into IIM Amritsar with a profile of 8/7/7. She did not let her low grades discourage her and she strived hard to get a great CAT score. Don’t let your past affect your future prospects. Put your 100% effort and you will definitely get what you deserve. As far as her graduation score is concerned, not many scored above 8 GPA. So her 7 GPA wasn’t that bad. In class 12th also, most of the IIMs compare a score of 80 in the Assam board to an 80 in the Andhra board or CBSE. Engineers also face an academic diversity issue. So they need a higher percentile than other graduates. Nowadays IIMs are converting CAT percentiles to the percentage for the CAT weightage component. So, the gap between the 99 and 95 percentile stoops down to 2 points for 50 % CAT weightage. Had the CAT scores been taken, the gap would have been 10–12 points. Hence it makes candidates with low academic profiles difficult to get into IIM. Fortunately, my cousin was lucky enough to get admission as a GEM fresher with an average profile.