It is quoted that a person should be lucky enough to enter the premises of any of the  Indian Institutes of Management. There may be some weight in this comment. It is a known fact that a candidate completing two year PG course in management in IIM is sure of getting a good job in India or abroad. Taking it as a hint, thousands of aspirants try their luck to get admission into one of the 13 IIMs. IIM students are top picks every year for leading international and Indian companies, but the courses are expensive and entail rigorous training. It is stated that appearing for CAT is directly linked to the country’s economy and placement. Thus, it’s a return-on-investment kind of decision. Those who are ready to spend Rs.13 lakh for an MBA course will definitely look for a better return through a better job, analysts commented. After the economic slowdown and poor job scenario in 2008 and 2009, many gave a rethink to management courses and only serious candidates opt for it now, is another comment

A common Admission Test (CAT) is conducted to select the candidates for admissions into 13 IIMs. The CAT 2011 is scheduled for 20 days in the period between October 22 and November 18. This year 2.06 candidates are taking up the CAT for the available seats of 3,300.

Registrations for the test improved to 206,000 from about 202,000 who sat for the entrance last year. But that’s still a steep drop from 242,000 candidates in 2009 and 270,000 the year before. CAT got a push this year as other leading business schools have adopted the test to screen students for their courses.

In August, the IITs at Mumbai, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Chennai and Roorkee, and the Indian Institute of Science decided to scrap their own joint management entrance test to adopt CAT, The six IITs run two-year, full-time postgraduate management programmes with an intake of about 600 students. The 13 IIMs admit around 3,300 students every year.

In the 2011 placement season, IIM- Lucknow received 528 offers for a batch of 366. Of the 206 recruiting companies, 53 were first-time recruiters. IIM-Calcutta has already received 45 pre-placement offers for the 2012 batch. In-campus placements of IIM students into leading companies in 2010 and an improved pre-placement scenario also helped the students to feel happy, it is said.

Delhi has the largest number of CAT aspirants, followed by Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Pune. As registration for the entrance examination ended on October 4, 2011, the sale of CAT, vouchers touched 2.06 lakh,

The CAT 2011 will have only two sections instead of three. The first section will focus on Quantitative Ability & Data Interpretation; the second on Verbal Ability & Logical Reasoning. These two sections will be implemented sequentially with separate time limits. The examination will be 140 minutes. Candidates will have 70 minutes to answer 30 questions within each section which will have an on-screen countdown timer. Once the time ends for the first section, they will move to the second and will no longer be able to go back. Although new in the computer-based version of CAT, this format was previously practiced in some of the earlier paper-and-pencil years. A 15-minute tutorial will be provided before the start of the test, and candidates are advised to go through that carefully before starting the main examination. The total duration will be two hours and 35 minutes including the tutorial. A practice test to provide candidates with a feel of the timed sections, as well as navigation and functionality of the actual test will be made available in the coming weeks. Once again candidates are advised to go though them carefully to familiarise themselves with the screens, layout, and navigation.

The number of test days has been retained at 20 days within the window from 22 October to 18 November 2011. This would provide candidates with the flexibility of choosing a suitable test day based on their convenience.  For those candidates who are differently abled, additional support will be provided as required.

Candidates choosing dates in the latter part of the exam window is not uncommon as the later dates help them gauge the pattern of the test from friends, media reports and online networks. The new two-section pattern of the test is especially expected to turn the test-takers more cautious., Candidates might want to delay taking the test by a couple of days (after the first day) to get a preview of the new pattern and not be the first ones to react to it , analysts said. They encourage students to take the test according to their level of preparation and convenience. “If somebody has started their preparations late, then the 20-day period can be helpful for them,” it is added.

Registrations for the Common Admission Test (CAT) 2011 test date and centre closed on the midnight of October 4. But by late evening leading up to the deadline, there were visibly no takers for some test-slots. Based on our observation of centre availability on the registration website on the evening of October 4, it was clear that test dates October 24 and 25 had been shunned by most candidates. The Dhanteras and Kali Chaudas festivals fall on these Diwali-eve dates. November 3, a Thursday, was also not chosen in cities such as Mohali, Shillong, Siliguri and Bangalore. There seemed to be no apparent reason for this pattern though.