IIMs May Extend CAT Score Validity To Five Years

So far, the score of the Common Admission Test, also known as CAT, was valid for just one year.

 

But IIM-Ahmadabad is considering turning the validity of the score for up to five years in line with the GMAT pattern. The IIM-Ahmadabad committee will take a decision on this. The step is being considered to ensure that the students who come to IIMs have some work experience before joining the institute.

 

"We get brilliant students every year but most of them have zero work experience. People take up the CAT exam just after their graduation and want to be enrolled because their score is not valid for the next year. Nobody is sure if he would crack CAT the next year," said Dr Ashish Nanda, director of the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmadabad.

 

As against a CAT score, which is valid only for one year, the score for the GMAT exam is valid for five years. This is the reason why a lot of talented people choose to go to foreign universities, through GMAT.

 

CAT is considered to be one of the toughest management exams all over the world. While the probability of making it to Harvard Business School is above 5 per cent, for making it to IIMs (top six IIMS) is just 0.25 per cent.

 

CAT 2015 notification is likely to be announced in July-August by IIM-Ahmadabad. Around 1.68 lakh candidates appeared for CAT 2014 out of 196,915 registrations. Apart from this, IIM-A is also considering changing the pattern of the CAT exam, which has very tough data interpretation and logical reasoning questions.

 

"From the level of questions asked in CAT, it feels that we are not looking for leaders but rocket scientists. One must understand that while rocket scientists are good at Math, not all of them have leadership qualities. So why have a question paper which is meant for rocket scientists," Dr Nanda said in an interaction with Businessworld.