The Common Admission Test (CAT-2020) notification for admissions to the Indian Institute of Management (IIMs) and MBA and PGDM Programs in other B-Schools is expected to come out by the first week of August. This year IIM Indore will be conducting the examination as per a circular published on the IIM Indore Website. Professor Harshal Lowalekar, an Associate Professor in the area of Operations Management has been appointed as the convenor for CAT. He is also the Chairperson of the Admissions of Integrated Programme in Business Analytics at IIM Indore.
Every year the CAT notification is published in leading newspapers either by the last week of July or the first week of August and this year amid apprehensions of COVID-19, candidates where doubtful that the notification may be delayed. But leading news channels have now confirmed that the CAT 2020 notification may be out by August first week itself.
CAT is held on the last Sunday of November, this year too it is expected to be on 29th November 2020. Earlier this year, IIM Indore had issued an invite to all the Non-IIM institutes, to apply for the Non-IIM CAT 2020 membership, the deadline for the same was July 15 as per the IIM Indore webpage.
Common Admission Test is the most sought after examination by MBA aspirants in India with more than 240,000 candidates writing the CAT 2019 for about 6000 seats in the 20 Indian Institute of Management and more than 200 B-Schools across the country accepting the score for their admission process. The CAT score is accepted by most of the colleges for a period of one year and it is available on the CAT portal for verification by the Non-IIM member colleges, but there are many colleges which also consider the CAT score for multiple years, especially lower-ranked colleges or some of the B-Schools which are offering a one year Executive MBA programs.
Once the CAT 2020 notification is out and the admission portal is opened, the candidates can login to the portal and apply for the examination. candidates are required to fill in personal details, academic details (X, XII, and Graduation), work experience details, and choose IIMs for which they would like their CAT score to be considered. CAT is the first stage of the admission process and in most IIMs the second stage consists of a Written Ability Test (WAT) and Personal Interview (PI). candidates applying for Non-IIM institutes would have to fill up separate forms to be considered for the Groups Discussion (GD) / WAT or PI stages.
Candidates belonging to the reserved category are advised to keep their certificates ready as it would be mandatory to upload the certificates at the time of application. Government colleges have a separate cut-off for general category and reserved category candidates. A candidate failing to produce the certificates at the time of the interview will only be considered under the general category for the final merit list. Once the CAT portal is live, candidates can download the formats for various certificates to be submitted for reserved category, PWD, etc. A FAQ section will also be available to address the frequently asked questions by the candidates.
Normally, the CAT portal is open till the month of September for the candidates, but it is advised that the candidates apply as early as possible to get their choice of venue of examination. The CAT examination is conducted in more than 150 cities across the country and a candidate can choose four cities of his choice as preference in the application form. The examination center will be assigned to candidates after the last date of the submission of the form and will be printed in the CAT Admit Card along with the slot details.
A candidate can appear for CAT any number of times, but in a year the CAT Examination is only held once. CAT is a computer-based examination with 100 questions from three sections of Verbal Ability, Logical Reasoning / Data Interpretation and Quantitative Ability to be completed in three hours (each section for one hour). In the last three years, the examination was held in two slots (morning and evening).
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