IIM Admissions: The case for common counselling

Newer IIMs are experimenting with common, 'single-window' admission counselling. Students wish all 21 would come together

- Shradha Chettri

The Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) have added yet another admission counselling process to the list this year. Four of the second-generation IIMs - Raipur, Kashipur, Ranchi and Tiruchirappalli - have broken away from the Common Admission Process (CAP) that was in place in 2025 and will, instead, have a Joint Admission Process (JAP) in 2026.

Unlike the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), the IIMs don't have a common admission counselling platform. Beyond the Common Admission Test (CAT), which every IIM participates in, each is free to manage its admission process on its own. However, to ease the process for candidates, different IIMs have come together to hold a joint process.

IIM Raipur is the coordinator of JAP 2026; IIM Udaipur, part of CAP 2025, will go it alone in 2026. As of the filing of this story, there was no clarity on how many remained in the CAP system, whether IIMs Bodh Gaya, Jammu, Nagpur and Sirmaur were still part of it. The older IIMs Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta - as well as some of the newer ones, such as Indore, Lucknow and Kozhikode, hold their own processes.

While the point behind the joint efforts is to make the process accessible and reduce duplication of effort, it is still too cumbersome for aspirants who feel a single counselling process for all 21 IIMs would help.

Common admission