A Note on the FMS Waitlist Movement - An aspirant's analysis

As compared to last year, more or less same ratio (1 : 12.15) has been maintained. Cut off for General category has come down slightly from 98.73 to 98.56 from CAT 2011 to CAT 2012. Similar trends could be observed in the other categories too. Interviews for MBA admissions would be held from March 18^th to March 24^th. Looking at these numbers, I’ve made an analysis on the wait list movement in FMS admissions. Here is the analysis:

For simplicity’s sake, I have taken General Category as the sample set. If everything goes as per the schedule, by 24^th of March, interviews for all the call getters would be completed. FMS is known to announce the results on the last day of the interviews or on the morning of the next day. So, in the worst case, results would be out by 25^th of March.

Last year, interviews were held after the results of most of the IIMs were out. So, about 350 out of the 1200 students were not physically present for the interviews. So, effectively, only 850 students were interviewed. And after the results were out, the waitlist moved till 52 after the 9^th list was out. So about 150 students(153 to be precise) were offered admission by FMS. Though the movement was not uniform across the 9 lists, it was not an exponential graph. Taking these statistics, a few interesting inferences and predictions could be made this year about the waitlist movement.

Last year’s wait list movement:

WAIT LIST ROUND	WAIT LIST NUMBER CLEARED
1	22
2	30
3	35
4	39
5	43
6	46
7	49
8	51
9	52

 

A few important facts that would help in this context are:

(1)  No IIM declared its result before April 10^th last year. So, even if we consider a buffer of 10days, IIMs would not disclose the final results before April 1^st. So, FMS would be the first institute to declare results(among IIMs, XLRI and FMS)

(2) Waitlists for IIM-A, B, C would move two to three weeks after the results are out. So, IIM-ABC waitlist would move only after April 15^th.

(3) Similar numbers could be applied for IIM-L and XLRI too.

(4) An assumption has been made that all (or most of) the call getters would prefer IIM-ABC to FMS and half of the call getters would prefer IIM-L or XLRI to FMS.

(5) If we observe the cut offs for various IIMs, we observe that all IIM-ACL call getters would have percentile higher than the cut off of FMS.

(6) All the assumptions are made based taking waitlist movement of last year as one of the parameters.

So, once results of FMS are out, most of the students with converts would register as seat confirmation in FMS can be made by paying Rs.11000/- and in case of withdrawal, Rs.10000/- would be given. But, when the results of ABC would be out in the first week of April, we might see a lot of people withdraw their registrations. Let us assume that half of the guys who convert FMS would convert A or B or C’s first list. This is because from last year’s statistics, about 350 students had already got admits in IIMs before FMS interviews and the wait list moved by 50%. So, there is a high chance for half of FMS converts to convert A/B/C. So, half of the FMS converts would withdraw on April 1^st. This is assuming that the deadline for paying fee in FMS is before IIM results are out. In other case, I suppose that 90% of them would register and the remaining would wait for the IIM results to be out and then register. I’ve chosen a high percentage of people because no one really knows when IIM results would be out and they would not be willing to take a risk by not registering for FMS.

So, out of the 100 converts that are declared by FMS, say only 90 register by April 1^st. As assumed, 50% of them convert A/B/C and hence the wait list moves by 45. Even in the remaining 10 people who have waited, let us assume that half of them convert A/B/C. So the effective seats remaining in FMS would be 50. Also L’s results propel a few students to leave FMS. So, effectively, about 55 seats would left over. Generally, first list students are given two weeks of time to register. So, in second week of april, when the second list is out, about 55 waitlisted students would get admits out of which at least one fourth of them would have ABC admits by then. Now, when waitlists in A, B and C move, about 30% of the people would leave FMS. So in total, about 50% of the second list students would take FMS. So, about 25 seats would be filled.

LIST NUMBER	SEATS OFFERED	SEATS ACCEPTED	SEATS LEFT	WAIT LIST CLEARED
MAIN LIST	100	45	55	55
FIRST WL	55	25	30	85

 

So, after the second list, 70 seats would be filled and there would still be 30 seats left. So, 30 more students would be sent offers in the third round. From this point, as the IIM-ABC lists would almost be exhausted, the wait list movement would not be huge. IIM-L and XLRI’s results would have some effect on the subsequent wait lists. From last year’s trends, 30 was the wait list after round 2 and 50 at the end of last round. So, about 60% more waitlists are cleared. From the previous analysis, WL85 was the number after the first wait list. So, adding 60% to it, about 50 more people would clear waitlists and get admissions. So, final waitlist would move up to 135.

So, to conclude, WL movement last year stood at around 50 but this year, after taking in various parameters into account, the waitlist movement would cross 120.

P.S : This is a calculated estimate and the author holds no responsibility for the accuracy of the actual result.

All the best FMS call getters :-)

Sources

- Sravanth Vangara

(The writer is  a resident of Hyderabad and an electrical engineering graduate from National Institute of Technology, Warangal – Class of 2012.  Currently works as a Business Technology Analyst with Deloitte Consulting. Singing and blogging are his hobbies. He subscribes to a religion called Cricket and worship Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid as Gods. Apart from this, he does cricket analytics and is also a Mathematics enthusiast. He blogs here)

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