Eager to bell the CAT next year? Then brush up your writing skills and work on your graduation score. With the Indian Institutes of Management changing the selection criteria, Common Aptitude Test (CAT) will no longer be based only on percentiles.

In the process for sometime now, many IIMs including Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Lucknow and Shillong, have incorporated elements other than regular group discussion and personal interview as part of reforming CAT.

Moving away from attaching maximum weight age to the CAT score, which was around 90 per cent, the new testing tools would now hold greater merit for candidates making it to the IIMs. One of these is essay writing, which has been given a weight age ranging between 25 and 30 per cent across institutes.

Hridesh Madan, a CAT coaching expert, said, "IIMs would focus on writing skills of candidates, complete with grammar and vocabulary. While everyone can speak up during the GD, how adept a student is in the language can be measured only through writing."

He added some IIMs that have already started with essay writing will soon do away with the GD.

Work experience of students will also be given weight age. IIM, Lucknow, for instance, gives only 30 per cent weight age to the CAT score. While essay, GD and PI together account for 45 per cent, the remaining is calculated on the basis of the student's score in Class X, XII and graduation.

IIM Shillong is one of the few IIMs giving more weight age to marks scored in Class X and XII (almost 60 per cent) for a long time. There have been instances last year when some students, who otherwise had scored a very high percentile, were not called by IIMs because of the low score in graduation.

"IIMs focus on the overall academic record of students rather than the CAT score," said Kshitij Mehra, another CAT coaching expert.