Hi Sarisha,

You have a good academic profile overall, especially your 10th score, and being a female candidate can be an advantage at several IIMs. The one-year gap is not a major concern as long as you can explain it clearly.

For CAT, I would suggest aiming for 99+ percentile. If you can move towards 99.5+, you’ll be in a stronger position for the more competitive IIMs and FMS. For XAT, keep 97-99+ as a good target range, depending on whether XLRI BM is your main goal.

Since you're interested in marketing, colleges like XLRI, MDI, SPJIMR, IIM Lucknow, IIM Kozhikode, IIM Mumbai and FMS are definitely worth targeting. Your focus now should mainly be on building a strong CAT/XAT score.