The country’s premier management institutes, the IIMs, may have planned to take on students from varied educational backgrounds (ET,February 12) but for now, those with engineering or technical degrees have won hands down. All 11 students who were within the 100th percentile this year are from engineering or tech backgrounds, with six of them from the elite Indian Institutes of Technology.

Over 2.5 lakh students took this year’s CAT. Topping the charts is Varun Mangamoori of IIT Madras, who has scored 299 out of 450.

CAT aspirants with similar backgrounds have regularly been making it to the 100 percentile club. Last year, for instance, of the nine students who stood within the 100th percentile, a majority were from the IITs, and one each from the International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad and NIT, Trichy.

Last year’s 100th percentilers Gourav Bhattacharya was from IIT Bombay and K Ravi from IIT Madras, while Sayan Sarkar and Ankit Anand were both from IIT Kharagpur. Ranjai Banerji was from IIIT Hyderabad, Rahul Jalan from NIT Trichy while Sankalp Mittal was a student of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Institute of Technology.

While a 100th percentile is not necessarily a guarantee for a spot in one of the IIMs — last year, one person in the percentile was rejected at the group discussion/personal interview (GD/PI) at IIM Calcutta for not making the sectional cut-off in one of the three sections — it’s considered a big achievement in B-school circles. Besides helping in bagging scholarships, it’s a valuable addition to bio-datas and a perk during placements as well.

This year, however, the students may make it through to the IIM GD/PIs. “All those in the 100th percentile have scored above 99.9% in the individual sections as well,” said a CAT group member who did not wish to be named.

He added that CAT toppers usually come from engineering or technical backgrounds since they are strong in the quantitative and data interpretation sections. “It’s not something that a student with a regular maths/commerce/arts background will find easy to emulate,” said the CAT group member.