CAT Trick IV

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. CAT entrance exam is used as a criteria to shortlist applicants for admissions to the six IIMs-IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta, IIM Lucknow, IIM Indore, and IIM Kozhikode.

Get details about the CAT exam paper, registration procedure, best management institutes, etc. Also have a look at past years' actual test papers, solutions, detailed analysis and practice mock CAT tests to clear the cutoff score and get admission in best MBA colleges in India.

• The Common Admission Test (CAT) is an all-India test conducted by the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) as an entrance exam for admission to the Post-graduate and Fellow Programs in management courses of several management institutes all over India including the IIMs.
• The CAT score is used separately by each institute along with other parameters i.e. academic performance, work experience, group discussion, written assessment and interview performance etc. to select candidates. The weightage assigned to CAT score may differ for each institute. Candidates are advised to read the weightage, process and breakup for each institute on its respective website.

CAT 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 in Common Admission Test vary every year and a typical CAT question paper can have anywhere between 75 and 150 questions. Common Admission Test evaluates the candidate's presence of mind and his ability to perform under pressure. Announcement of the procedure for appearing in the Common Admission Test is made in leading newspapers in August every year for admission to the programme beginning in the second half of June of the following year. The test will be conducted during November.

Usually, CAT tests three of your abilities:- Problem Solving- Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning- Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension. CAT demands competency across all sections of the paper. So, the number of sections in the test don't really matter; what matters is whether you are competitive and have answered questions in all the sections. CAT has evolved from a speed based simple test into a test which demands more proficiency in concepts and fundamentals rather than just speed.

All the questions are of multiple-choice nature with four/five alternate answer choices and the candidate has to choose the best answer for each of the questions and mark it on a special Optical Reader answer sheet. Differential marks are allotted to the questions. The test comprises 150 to 200 objective type questions and is usually divided into three to four sections. The number of questions in the test has been coming down steadily, from nearly 200 in the 1990s to 90 in 2005 and just 75 in 2006. Very little strategy could be applied in selecting the easiest questions. Cut that down and don't waste time on questions which are lengthy.

It is neither expected, nor possible, that all the questions be answered, so the CAT also tests the candidates' ability to prioritise under pressure: a quality necessary in the competitive environment of IIMs' courses. The misconception that you need to slove the whole Question Paper is wrong. If you can solve 38 to 40 per cent of the questions, CORRECTLY, you are through.

Not an Engineer - No Problems , You don’t need to be an Engineer to

 get into an IIM . Infact being a non-engineer may help in the Interview part. IIMs encourage diversity. And being a non-engineer you may be compared with other non-engineers. Rather than with engineers who may be compared with IITians.

Coaching is helpful for CAT Preparation. The Coaching Institutes will teach you shortcuts and you will get chance to appear in Mock Tests conducted for CAT. There are many good Coaching Institutes - Bulls Eye, Ascent, TIME, IMS, Roots Education and Career Launcher. It is tough to say which one institute is the best MBA Entrance coaching Institute. It completely depends on faculty. Before joining any coaching classes, first consult to students who have already joined that particular institute. You can also try Exam Preperation CDs being offered on the net.

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