CAT Stands for Common Admission Test. CAT is conducted by IIMs and this examination is a completely computer-based examination. Candidates who crack the exam will get a chance to do the postgraduate program. CAT is a management-related aptitude test that will help to get admission to renowned management colleges in IIMs and Non-IIMs.
History of the CAT Examination
Before 2010 CAT was a pen and paper-based exam then from 2010 CAT became a computer-based test. For the very first time, on 1st May 2009, the decision was taken that CAT will be a computer-based examination. In August 2011 Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) will not accept JMET scores for their management programs so they will start accepting the score of CAT.
Eligibility Criteria and Examination Pattern
A candidate should satisfy the following condition so that he or she can appear in the CAT examination.
- Candidates must have a bachelor’s degree or they should be in the final year with more than or equal to 50% marks. For Scheduled Caste(SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), and Persons with Disabilities (PWD) must have more than or equal to 45% marks.
- The degree must be issued by any university or institute which is constituted by an act of the state or central legislative body of India or by any other organization of education which should be established by the parliament.
- The time duration of the CAT examination is 2 hours, the question paper consists of both Mcq and non-Mcq type questions. For each answer, +3 marks are allotted and for each wrong answer for Mcq-type questions, -1 is the negative mark. No marks are deducted for the wrong answer for Non-Mcq type questions. A total of 66 questions are there in the CAT exam.
Test Consists of Three Sections
This CAT exam will be of 108 marks in total and a time of 40 minutes is allotted for each section.
- Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC): This section checks how strong a candidate is to read the passages and comprehend passages efficiently.
- Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning (DILR): This section checks how strong a candidate is to interpret data that is presented in a tabular or graphical form. It also checks the ability of the candidate to identify the relationships and patterns.
- Quantitative Ability (QA): This section checks the candidate’s ability and how fast he or she can solve mathematical, computational, and statistical questions.
How to Apply for CAT Exam
Registration for CAT consists of three steps online registration for CAT, form filling for CAT, and fee payment.
Step 1: Online Registration for CAT
Follow the further steps to do registration.
- Visit the official website of CAT->www.iimcat.ac.in
- Select ‘Register’ which is under the tab of ‘New Candidate Registration’.
- Then Enter the required details of candidates like name of the candidate, date of birth, mobile number and etc.
- Click on the tab ‘Generate OTP‘.
- Enter the OTP and then click on Submit.
Step 2: Form Filling for CAT
After submitting the OTP, the user ID and password will be sent to the registered mobile number and email ID then it should be used to log in to the CAT site for filling out the application form. Then candidates have to give their personal details, academic details, work experience, selection of programs, and selection of test city.
Step 3: Fees Payment
In the last step, the candidate has to pay the exam fee. For General, EWS and NC-OBC category fees for CAT Exam are INR 2,300 for SC, ST, and PwD category fees for CAT Exam is INR 1,150.
CAT Score and Percentile
The total marks obtained by a candidate in a CAT paper are considered as a CAT score and CAT Percentile is a measure of a candidate’s performance on the test relative to that of another candidate. The percentile score indicates the proportion of test takers who scored lower than the candidate. Nowadays Percentile calculation is a common practice in many competitive exams, including the CAT Exam, for comparing candidates’ performance. The following table describes the score vs percentile prediction of CAT 2022.
Score |
Percentile |
|
136 |
100 |
|
115 |
99.5 |
|
101 |
99 |
|
91 |
98 |
|
76 |
95 |
|
63 |
90 |
|
56 |
85 |
|
45 |
80 |
|
36 |
70 |
Advantages and Career Opportunities
- CAT score will help to get admission to prestigious colleges like IIMs, FMS, XLRI and etc.
- CAT will teach candidates how to manage their time in an efficient way so that they can solve their questions with proper time management.
- By cracking the exam candidates can get admission into prestigious colleges which will help them to get a high salary job that helps them to develop their personality.
- It will develop entrepreneurship and business skills so that we can launch a high-return start-up. MBA also helps with the failures in start-ups or to expand the growth of start-ups.
- After getting into IIM, its network will help to facilitate my business career.