The Hindu Business Line : Life after the CAT

Around 1,90,000 students who appeared for the CAT on November 19 vying for the 1,500-1,600 seats in the offing at the IIMs. This implies only 8 in 1,000 who applied for the IIMs will finally land in one! So, any sensible aspirant should necessarily make back-up plans for themselves, in the eventuality that they do not get an offer from the coveted IIMs. In this article, let us examine some of the good fallback options available to MBA aspirants post their performance in CAT. There are two important types of opportunity a serious aspirant ought to consider — Good institutes apart from IIMs that use CAT performance to admit students and some of the other key management tests to be considered.

Further options using CAT

First of all, it is important to remember that there are over 75 institutes apart from the IIMs that use the CAT scorecard to admit students into their institutes. Of these, institutes such as MDI Gurgaon, MICA (Mudra Institute of Communication, Ahmedabad), NITIE (National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai), S P Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai, figure right at the top of the list of good Indian B-schools and we, at T.I.M.E., have estimated that a student scoring in the range of 90 - 100 can get calls from some of these institutes. As a point of comparison, we are expecting that the cut-offs to get an IIM call would be in the region of 100 - 105.

The next set of colleges such as Bharatidasan Institute of Management, Trichy, Fore School of Management, Delhi, Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad and International Management Institute, Delhi, K J Somaiya Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai, T A Pai Management Institute, Manipal, admit students with even lower scores in CAT and they are all part of some of the reputed national-level B-schools.

Other Management Entrance Tests (OMETs)

Appearing for the CAT is only half the battle unless you are among the elite few who are confident that they will get a call from IIMs. There are a host of other important management entrance tests that a student should appear for.

Some of the ones that have been already been conducted are

JMET - The IITs jointly conduct the JMET (Joint Management Entrance Test) which is used by all the IITs and IISc for admission into their MBA programme. This year, this examination was conducted on December 10.

IIFT (Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi & Calcutta) conducts its own entrance exam every year to admit students and this year the exam was conducted on November 26.

NMAT - Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai - a top-level institute in the country - conducts the NMAT (Narsee Monjee Aptitude Test) and this year it was also conducted on December 10.

SNAP - The Symbiosis group of colleges, located in Pune, jointly conduct the SNAP (Symbiosis National Aptitude Test) which is used for admissions to various programmes offered by them. The test was conducted on December 17.

Some very important exams for highly prestigious institutes are yet to be conducted including

FMS (Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi) - figuring among the top 10 business schools in India — is conducting its exam on January 21 and usually their paper contains questions from three broad areas — reasoning, verbal ability & reading comprehension and quantitative ability. Their last few years' paper had 175 questions with 4 marks given for every correct answer and 1 deducted for every wrong answer.

XAT - The XLRI Admission Test (XAT) is conducted by XLRI, Jamshedpur — the oldest and one of the top management institutes in the country. It is the second most popular management entrance exam in India and is used by 35 other management institutes, some of the good ones being Goa Institute of Management (Goa), Loyola Institute of Business Administration (Chennai), Mount Carmel Institute of Management (Bangalore), St Josephs College of Business Administration (Bangalore), S P Jain Institute of Management & Research (Mumbai) and Xavier Institute of Management - Bhubaneshwar (XIM-B). The broad areas of questions were the same as the CAT - reasoning, verbal ability & reading comprehension and quantitative ability - with an additional section on general knowledge usually added (though it was not included in XAT 2006).

The XAT is known to be a tough nut to crack and like the CAT has been a bit unpredictable. Last year, for example, the XAT was the first examination to announce progressive negative marking. The instruction set clearly mentioned that there will be a negative mark of 1/3 the mark for up to 5 incorrect answers in each section. Thereafter the penalty increases to ½ the mark allotted for the question. This year also the unpredictability continues with their notification not speaking of the general knowledge section and including an essay component.

The good news is that a good, comprehensive preparation for CAT is good ground-work for most of these OMETs. And a couple of mock tests for each of these tests will help one in enhancing their preparedness levels for these tests. With more awareness on the various options available to a student, there is still hope for thousands of this year's MBA aspirants.

(Vidyalakshmi R, an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad and NIT Allahabad, is Director, Chennai centre, T.I.M.E., - an education and student training/counselling organisation. She may be contacted at chennai@time4education.com.)

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Life after the CAT