MBA Entrance | CAT | 8th August 2022
CAT vs. other MBA Entrance Examinations
CAT or the Common Admission Test is a widely known examination in India. It is one of the toughest entrance examinations in the country, which gets graduates into top-notch business schools across the country. Millions of graduates prepare for the CAT entrance examination with the hope to get admission to the best IIMs in the country. Apart from the IIMs, there are a few other business schools that take the CAT scorecard into consideration.
The top four IIMs are the IIMA, which stands for the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, IIM B, in Bangalore, IIM C, In Calcutta, and IIM D, which is located in Delhi. The CAT entrance gets you through the most prestigious MBA course in India. The CAT exams are usually held around the month of November. This year’s CAT 2022 is going to be held on 27th November 2022. The CAT entrance examination is held and conducted by an IIM each year. And this year’s exam will be conducted by IIM Bangalore.
The top IIMs set a cut-off of around 96 percentile. It is a cut-throat competition, and the students who prepare for CAT have to perform under tremendous pressure. Apart from IIMs, there are many other management institutions in India where the CAT scores are valid. These institutes highly regard the scorecard of the CAT examination, so much so that they entirely rely upon them. Like many other management institutes, they do not go ahead and conduct examinations on their own. S.P.Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR), and the National Institute for Industrial Engineering (NITIE) are some of them.
Till 2009, CAT was a paper-based examination and happened over a single day throughout the country. CAT has now become a computer-based examination, which is conducted over a period of 2 hours, where the candidates are expected to prove their merit on the basis of tests taken under three sections.
Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC): This section contains 24 questions, further bifurcating into questions of varying proportions regarding the student's verbal ability, and his ability to comprehend a given passage. This requires the candidates to have a grasp of the English language, and their understanding of it.
Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning (DILR): 20 questions are asked in this section of the question paper. It varies in proportion to the number of questions asked from Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation respectively. Under this section, a candidate who is good with reasoning, and draws conclusions from given data performs well.
Quantitative Ability (QA): This section contains 22 questions. This covers arithmetic, geometry, algebra, and trigonometry. A candidate who is good with numbers will easily be able to perform well in this section.
This brings the usual question pattern of the CAT paper to 198 questions to be solved in 2 hours, allowing each candidate an hour for each section.
However, if CAT 2021 is to follow the same rules as CAT 2020 which had its rules changed a bit due to Covid-19, there will be 40 minutes allotted for each section. This means the entire examination will be conducted for 2 hours, with VARC and QA containing 26 questions, and LRDI with 24 questions.
Regarded as one of the toughest examinations in India, millions of students prepare for CAT every year with the hope to get through the top business schools in the country. The CAT entrance can be the staircase to a candidate’s immeasurable corporate success.
CAT preparation makes the candidates well equipped with logical and reasoning skills.
Preparing for CAT makes the candidate well-spoken, well acquainted with newer words in English, and sharpens their comprehension abilities.
CAT preparation leads to the brushing up of secondary-level mathematics.
Finally, preparing for CAT makes it a cakewalk for the candidate to prepare for any other subject that just requires excellence in English and Mathematics.
Apart from CAT, there are many other entrance examinations in India that can lead your way to a master’s in business management. They are equivalent to the CAT examination, only a little less in terms of difficulty level. Institutes like the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Xavier School of Management, and Symbiosis International University hold a separate entrance examination for students who wish to pursue MBA from these particular institutions.
IIFT holds an IIFT entrance examination, Xavier School of Management holds an entrance which they call XAT, and Symbiosis International University holds the SNAP entrance examination. The syllabus is absolutely the same as followed by the CAT structure. Only the question pattern differs, the way the questions are placed differs, and the difficulty level varies.
Apart from the above-mentioned institutes, Tata School of Social Sciences offers a range of master's degrees in various fields, some of which are considered equivalent to an MBA degree. Anna University in Tamil Nadu holds a separate entrance examination, TANCET MBA for admission to their university. Directorate of Technical Education, Maharashtra holds MAH MBA CET for students who would want to get admission there. ICFAI Business School holds their entrance examination IBSAT to get students enrolled in their MBA courses.
Associations of Indian Management Schools (AIMS) conduct an entrance examination which they call ATMA to handpick students who suit their curriculum structure. Besides CAT which paves the way for the students to the top Institutes for business management, these entrance examinations provide chances for students who do not get through CAT. Instead of losing out on years, they are provided with few other chances to make their dream of pursuing an MBA from an elite Indian institution come true.
The dates are yet to be confirmed, but they will definitely not be any sooner than November 2021. Till then, keep preparing, keep learning and practicing, and keep repeating the daily habits which ultimately guide you to the stairs of success.
