The Hindu Business Line : 2.3 lakh candidates set to take CAT

Over 2.30 lakh students across the country are gearing up to take the examination which is scheduled to be held on November 18. They will be vying for a mere 1,500 seats in all the IIMs put together.

“About 1.84 lakh candidates took the exam last year. This year, 2.4 lakh applications have been sold and at least 2.3 lakh are expected to take the test. This shows the growing interest in IIMs and other reputed institutes where CAT scores are taken into consideration,” said Sai Kumar Swamy, Director (CAT), Triumphant Institute of Management Education (TIME).

According to the CAT bulletin, the paper would have three sections — verbal ability, quantitative ability and logic and data interpretation — to be answered in two-and-a-half hours.

The competition for seats in the IIMs makes the CAT a tough test. But this was not discouraging the candidates from taking the exam, Swamy told The New Manager.

The reasons were varied.

“The difference between the IIMs and the non-IIM business schools in terms of the packages offered and the reputation is a major driver for the popularity of the CAT. Currently, the average salary package of an IIM graduate is around 12.5 lakh per annum, while in many non-IIM schools it is below Rs 5 lakh,” points out Swamy.

However, there is a flip side to the growing popularity of the CAT. Besides making it tough for the aspirants, the large numbers of candidates is also creating problems for the IIMs.

IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Calcutta have recently announced minimum cut-offs in the CAT for candidates seeking admission.

According to Nishant Saxena, CEO of the Lucknow-based Elements Akademia and an alumnus of IIM Lucknow, the fad for the CAT has a deeper message.

“The number of aspirants pinpoints a fundamental problem in our management education. For a population of over 1 billion, the IIMs select (through CAT) less than one per cent,” Saxena said.

“This is far lower than the global scenario (over 10 per cent in the National University of Singapore and Harvard) and calls for quality management education,” he said.

“Currently, there are 998 business schools approved by the All-India Council for Technical Education. Except for those who graduate from the top 100 schools, the remaining students have a tough time finding a decent job. So, there is an urgent need to set up more quality management institutions,” he adds.

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