CAT – MBA Admission Test – General Description
CAT is the gateway to the cream of management institutes in India, the IIMs. CAT, or the Common Admission Test, is an aptitude test; It is the most popular test among prospective management students because it is accepted by the best institutes. The CAT is one of the most demanding entrance exams in the world for any graduate institute.
CAT MBA Entrance Exam is used as the criteria to shortlist applicants for admission to the six IIMs: IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta, IIM Lucknow, IIM Indore and IIM Kozhikode. Common Admission Test is one of the largest MBA entrance exams held annually in India. The CAT score is also accepted by more than 75 non-IIM institutes across Indiasome of which are as reputable as the IIMs.
Eligibility for postgraduate management programs in all IIMs and for entry to IIM-CAT is at least a three-year bachelor’s degree in any discipline from a recognized university with 50% marks at graduation. Indian Institute of Management (IIM), the leading business schools in the country (and considered among the best in the world) conduct this test to select potential students for the next round of the admissions process (consisting of a personal interview and a group discussion) for their MBA and Fellowship programs.
Those who appear on the final year graduation exam are also eligible to appear on the Common Admission Test. Some people feel that Common Admission Test (CAT) it’s more of a rejection procedure than a selection process, it rejects those who can’t make their minds work at full speed for two and a half hours non-stop.
CAT exam covers questions in five broad areas such as verbal ability and reasoning, reading comprehension, quantitative skills, data interpretation, and logical reasoning.
The number of questions asked on the Common Admission Test varies each year and a typical CAT Questionnaire It can have between 75 and 150 questions. The common admission test assesses the candidate’s presence of mind and her ability to perform under pressure. The procedure for taking the Common Admission Test is announced in the main newspapers in August of each year for admission to the program from the second half of June of the following year. The test will take place during the month of November. Notice CAT 2007 for admission to the 2008 session has been announced.
CAT generally assesses three of your skills: – Problem solving – Data interpretation and logical reasoning – Verbal ability and reading comprehension. The CAT exam requires proficiency in all sections of the document. So the number of sections in the test doesn’t really matter; what matters is if you are competitive and have answered questions in all sections.
All questions are multiple choice with four or five alternative answer options and the candidate must choose the best answer for each of the questions and mark it on a special answer sheet of the optical reader. Differential points are assigned to the questions. The test consists of 150 to 200 objective-type questions and is generally divided into three or four sections. The number of questions on the test has steadily decreased, from nearly 200 in the 1990s to 90 in 2005 and just 75 in 2006.
Very little strategy could be applied to select the easiest questions. Reduce that and don’t waste time on questions that are long. One misconception is that you have to pass the entire question paper, not at all. If you can solve 38 to 40 percent of the questions CORRECTLY, you are done.
Not an engineer, no problem You don’t need to be an engineer to get into an IIM. In fact, not being an engineer can help in the interview part. IIMs encourage diversity. And not being an engineer, you can be compared to other non-engineers. Rather than engineers who can be compared to IITians.
Personal or postal trainings are helpful for CAT preparation. Training institutes will teach you shortcuts and you will get a chance to appear in mock tests conducted for CAT. There are many good training institutes: Bulls Eye, Ascent, TIME, IMS, Roots Education, and Career Launcher. It is difficult to say which is the best MBA entrance training institute. It completely depends on the faculty. Before joining any training class, first check out the students who have already joined that particular institute. you can also try MBA Entrance Preparation Question Bank CD that is offered on the net. These MBA exam prep CDs help you practice exams.
-Anurag Chopra Entrance Exams India Portal
Get Free entrance exam and admission alerts subscribing to Entrance Exam Alerts Group on Yahoo Groups in your email box. Currently more than 20,000 members
