Blog

Have you graduated this year and are planning to pursue a Post Graduate Program in Management Studies? If yes, then certainly you need to know in detail about Common Admission Test (CAT). Presently CAT is the most competitive examination for entry into any good business school in India. This entrance test serves as eligibility for admission in any of the 20 Indian Institute of Management campuses across the country and also accepted by various other premier B-Schools of the country like Asian Business School, Noida.

Submission of Application

As far as CAT 2018 Registration procedure is concerned, the process is already open from August 08, 2018 and shall close on September 19, 2018 (5:00 PM). The process needs to be initiated online on www.iimcat.ac.in. The requisite fee is required to be paid during online registration through payment gateway using a valid Credit Card, Debit Card or Net Banking facility.

Accordingly Admit Cards shall be made available to be downloaded between October 24, 2018 and November 25, 2018 from www.iimcat.ac.in, the official website of CAT 2018

Exam Date

As is the norm, CAT is held every year on last Sunday of November. Accordingly, this year it shall be held on 25 November 2018 (Sunday) in two shifts viz. forenoon and afternoon.

Eligibility

As per the basic eligibility criteria, candidates who have completed graduation with at least 50% marks are eligible to apply for CAT 2018. At the same time, candidates in final year/semester are also eligible to apply. A relaxation of 5% marks is awarded to candidates belonging to SC/ST categories.

Syllabus

As such, there is no specific syllabus for CAT and infact anything and everything related to general intelligence is under the purview of CAT syllabus. However, as a thumb rule, you are expected to cover areas related to Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension, Quantitative Aptitude, Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning.

As far as CAT 2018 exam pattern is concerned, it is going to similar to those of previous years. It is classified into three sections:

• Section I: Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension
• Section II: Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning
• Section III: Quantitative Ability

The questions in each of those sections will either be Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) or Non Multiple Choice Questions (Non MCQ). All the questions shall carry equal weightage. Just to add that the number of Non-MCQs in each section may vary. For Non-MCQs, wrong answer won’t attract any negative marking. However, in case of MCQs, any wrong answer shall fetch negative marking.

Scoring Scheme

In case of Non-MCQs, 3 marks shall be awarded for every ‘correct answer’. In case of MCQs, each correct answer shall be awarded 3 marks and in case the answer is wrong, it shall attract a penalty of 1 marks whereas any question left unattended won’t affect your score.

Subsequently CAT 2018 results are expected to be announced by second week of January, 2019. Each IIM is independent to mandate their own eligibility criteria (including academic cut-offs and relative weights) and follow different selection process. CAT cut off for different IIMs is expected to vary as the driving selection factors are variable and include performance in CAT 2018, previous academic performance, relevant work experience and other similar inputs that may be used in short-listing of candidates at various stages of the selection process.