Your Success Chances in CAT !

CAT has been rated as the most difficult MBA entrance test in the world by the Economist Intelligence Survey .

Also, if the numbers are any indication, more and more aspirants are lining up for a career in the managerial ranks instead of sweating it out on the shop floor.

Around 230,000 candidates are scheduled to take the Common Admission Test (CAT) — one of the most competitive exams in the world — next month.

This translates into a 21 per cent increase in the number of CAT aspirants over last year, when the total number of candidates stood at around 190,000. In contrast, the number of aspirants for the CAT exam a decade back was only 40,000.

The increasing numbers are indicative of the importance of CAT as the premier management entrance exam as well as the growing economy, which has seen an explosion in the creation of managerial jobs. The country’s seven Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) use only CAT scores to shortlist candidates. The IIM’s annual intake is 1,600 students, including IIM- Shillong, which starts operations from academic year 2008. In effect, the ratio of aspirants to the number of IIM seats available is 1:125. If one were to take the total number of 3,400 management degree seats available across schools (99, not including the IIMs) that use CAT scores to select candidates, the ratio stands at 1:59. CAT is as competitive as the IIT engineering qualifying test, the Joint Entrance Examination, which saw as many as 200,000 candidates appear for just 4,193 seats spread across the seven IITs in 2007. The numbers also hide the growing gap between the demand and supply of seats in the top management institutes across the country. The top 10 B-schools accepting CAT scores, barring the IIMs, have a capacity of only around 2000 seats. Read Complete News at Business Standard click here