IIM fees hike
IIM fees hike by 10 %
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CAT 2013 examnination over
As many as 1.94 Lakh candidates took the Common Admission Test for admissions to the Indian Institutes of Management and other premier B-schools across the country this year.
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The results, expected to be announced on January 14, 2014, would be available at www.cat2013.iimidr.ac.in.
Across all IIMs, 115 seats were added for B-School admissions this year, taking the total tally to 3,335 seats.
CAT 2013 Review
CAT successfully completes 5 years of online testing and surely successfully so. This year’s CAT –at least the first day, first slot – can be called the Online CAT’s first serious attempt to return to basics. By basics, I mean, bringing back the importance of having the right attitude and control over application of topics and requisite persistence throughout the paper.
Nearly everything can be called similar to what was last year in terms of the sub-sectional break up of questions – with 21 questions of Quantitative Aptitude and 9 questions of Data Interpretation forming the 30 questions of the first section and with 21 questions of Verbal Ability and 9 questions of Analytical Reasoning forming the 30 questions of the second section.
Overall paper can be called Moderate to difficult and this movement is a positive movement because the more prepared student with better test taking attitude and time management skills will be the eventual winner.
Tip to the CAT takers: Revise the basics of Quant. Work on calculation speed in DI. Get your selection and prioritisation right in VA and AR section and CAT is all yours. And remember, whatever time you save from DI and AR will help you get that additional attempt in QA or VA.
Source:
TIPS TO CRACK CAT 2013
Here are some tips to crack CAT 2013:
- Know what is needed: You should have a thorough knowledge of the CAT syllabus before starting the studies. If possible try to get the previous year’s paper to get some ideas about the exam.
- Know your strengths and weaknesses: You might have been familiar with the concept of SWOT that is strength,weaknesses, opportunities and threats. You certainly are aware of your strengths and weaknesses and knowing your syllabus will obviously help you realize what you are able to do and what not. Work on the areas needed to be overcome and improve in what you are good at. Work on the tricks to avoid the threats.
- Time Management: Instead of wasting time in thinking and getting confused it is better to prepare a routine for your studies and follow that regularly for cracking CAT 2013 exams. Self study is also very important apart from attending the coaching classes and tutorials.
- Choose right tutorials: Enroll in reputed coaching centers which have had produced successful candidates in the past.Though succeeding in exams depends more upon the capability of the student, a lot more depends upon right guidance and quality study materials.
- Mock Test: Try to attempt as many mock tests as you canfor passing out CAT 2013. The more you go for the mock tests the more you become used to the CAT environment.
- Keep an eye on current affairs: Don’t take your present knowledge for granted. There are many developments and changes going on and around which can be asked in your exam.
CAT 2013 Series
As CAT 2013 is less than a month, I would be posting article related to CAT preparation, motivation, strategy and tactics.
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More than 3 lakh people give CAT, and aspire to go top MBA schools across India. This is the first step towards your goal. Best of luck.
Getting through the CAT 2013 exams (which is a computer based test held each year by the IIMs for candidates seeking admission to the different postgraduate programs in management) requires hard work and labor. The best part now is that many top reputed B-Schools other than the IIMs use the CAT scores for selecting the candidates.
If you have decided to walk through CAT 2013 for getting yourself a seat in top management Institute for an MBA degree, you must have started to search for the coaching centers and guidance tips for clearing the test.
Study in France Admission Tour
For all aspirants who want to study in France, here is an excellent opportunity. More than 30 colleges admission counselor would be
present at the venue. You can clear all your doubts. If anything specific,
please mail me arshadred@rediffmail.com,
I would love to help.
For more info www.facebook.com/cfindia
28th Sept, Bangalore
30th Sept, Chennai
3rd October, Pune
05 October , Chandigarh
Top engineering and business schools are attending.
IDP UK US Canada Fair
For all aspirants who want to study abroad, here is an excellent opportunity. More than 30 colleges admission counselor would be
present at the venue. You can clear all your doubts. If anything specific,
please mail me arshadred@rediffmail.com,
I would love to help.
Venue: Hotel Vivanta Taj, Bangalore on 26th
September
Fair Highlights: Application Fee Waiver
On Spot application submission and assesstment.
For more info www.india.idp.com
Studying Abroad becomes Expensive
With $ touching Rs 65, Studying Abroad becomes Expensive. This will certainly play a factor in admissions decision.
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Best Careers for Students Just Out of College
So you have just finished college and it is time for you to find a job. This will be your first introduction to the real world so it can be intimidating at first. It is essential that you take some time in order to make the right decision regarding your career. Maybe you will want to improve your studies and get an MBA in order to secure a better paying job. You can find mba admissions consulting reviews online that will help you find the best companies that can help you achieve this goal.
Moreover, you can head towards one of these careers that are well-suited for students who just finished college. 1. Software Development If you are a wiz with computers, then anything IT-related would be a good choice for you. However, out of all the professions in this field, software development tends to pay really well, does not seek a lot of experience and is perfect for young people. 2. Pharmaceutical Representative If you are good with people and are also adept at selling then being a pharmaceutical rep can be a great way to earn a lot of money right off the bat. A science background will also be really useful, but good communication is what matters most. The perks are good, but you need to be willing to travel a lot on short notice.
Internet Marketing This job gives an advantage to students because they tend to be the most adept when it comes to social media. Nowadays, a company needs to promote itself using these new features in order to become successful so anyone that has knowledge of how to do so can secure a well-paying position as an internet marketer. If you are interested in advancing your studies and getting an MBA for your career, then Amerasia Consulting is the company that can help you achieve this goal.
Myths about CAT Prep
You can go easy with the Quantitative Ability section if you are an engineer. To be honest, it would not matter whether you are an engineer or not. If you take the Common Admission Test (CAT) papers from say 5 years ago, the Quantitative Ability section used to be quite tough grilling you on the application of multiple concepts in a single question – something that the engineers found easier to crack as compared to their counterparts from the non-engineering backgrounds. But now things have changed.
In the current scheme of things where the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have shifted focus to increasing the diversity in their incoming batches, the focus on a tough quantitative ability section has reduced significantly so that a level playing field is created for test-takers across educational backgrounds. So even if you are an engineer you better start running because there are other people who might be as good as you.
Candidates who are fluent in English will always do well. This is another myth. Do not rest on your laurels if you have been into public speaking/debating etc. since long. This is because CAT has more to it than a command over the Queen’s language. The importance of test-taking strategy and practice cannot be emphasised enough. I have seen enough number of candidates who have a good command over the language but falter in the test because they cannot manage their time.
You have to be equally good at both the sections, Quantitative as well as Verbal Ability because in the end what matters is the overall percentile. Yes there is an individual cut-off percentile for both the sections but then if you carefully see, that sectional cut-off percentile is more often than not significantly lower than the overall percentile. Logically this means that nearly all candidates are better at one section than they are at the other and hence you too can have one of the sections as your core strength. So when you start preparing, focus on your stronger section as a means to boost your overall percentile while the in the not-so-strong section focus on consistently clearing the cut-off first.
People with no work experience stand a better chance at clearing the CAT and getting an admit in their dream b-school. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Freshers (people with 0 work ex) are more likely to perform better in the exam simply because they are already in touch with academics when they give the exam for the first time. Also when you prepare for CAT while you are still in college you have a whole bunch of people around you who are also preparing for CAT. This acts as a great motivator for candidates to give it their best shot, score higher and perform better. But beyond that everybody is at the same level playing field.
People with high work-ex have a higher chance of clearing the CAT and getting an admit in their dream b-school. This again is a widely popular myth that we come across a lot many times on various forums. People with high work-ex definitely have an overall advantage in their profile – the work-ex helps boost their overall chances of selection. But before that they have to clear the cut-off (both sectional and overall) for the CAT exam. And this is where the problem arises. You see, preparing alongside your job is far tougher as compared to preparing alongside your regular undergraduate college studies. When you are working your professional responsibilities take up a lot of your time and hence it becomes difficult to balance your preparation with your job. As you spend more time working, your job responsibilities will only grow.
The earlier you start your CAT prep the better. This is again a myth that has been fuelled purely by commercialisation of test preparation and the increasing competitive nature of the CAT exam. The reality is that CAT tests the application of basic quantitative and verbal ability concepts that one usually learns in high school. What you need is a good amount of practice to refresh these concepts as well as learn their application in complex problems. But then at the same time it is important that you do not over do things. In these cases you get bored. If you start too early and if you are reasonably good with your basics you would inadvertently peak too early and then your performance in the actual exam will be suboptimal.
The more you practice the better you perform. The old adage of ‘practice makes a man perfect’ is not directly applicable in this scenario simply because of the pressure and rigour involved here. CAT prep is like a pressure cooker situation – beyond a point you would buckle no matter what. So over practicing only makes the pressure cooker period more unbearable and hence you might start buckling way before the actual exam.
Someone who has taken the CAT multiple times has a better chance at clearing it. This is again a myth. The very fact that he/she has taken it multiple times is an indication that the prediction has not gone absolutely right! In fact no one can predict what kind of an exam CAT will be this year – this unpredictability is what makes the exam tough. Predictions about the exam only build preconceived notions which would in their own subtle way hamper your performance.
The more shortcuts I know the better I perform. Shortcuts are a good way to cut down on ‘time spent per question’. But over the past few years the CAT exam has become more concept-focused and less speed-focused. This has a twin impact. One, the number of questions in the test has reduced significantly, and you would not get additional points for finishing the exam early, so speed is thrown out of the equation to a great extent. Secondly, using shortcuts in these conceptual questions increases the risk of errors. Hence old school methods coupled with crystal clear concepts will hold you in good stead. If you want to go faster improve your calculation speed – that would definitely help.
The more full length tests the better. Full-length tests come into the picture only at a later stage of preparation. In the early stages of preparation one should focus on the right kind of and the right amount of practice. Practising full length tests also takes up a lot of time and you might not get a lot of time to work on your weaker areas. Hence even at later stages of your prep, you should focus more on taking fewer full length tests, analyse them completely to understand your strengths and weaknesses and then work on those areas to get a better score.
A high IQ will guarantee you success in the exam. You might think that knowing the heavy words like lugubrious, sanguinary or highfalutin will allow you relax and act like one. Nor does knowing the roots of quadratic and structures of logarithms by heart much help. Such kind of knowledge is definitely a start, and that is where it ends – nothing more nothing less. The CAT exam is more about the test taking strategy, a constant will to prepare better and challenge your standards of performance.
CAT is intelligence based testing and hence only the crème de la crème crack it – You could not have been more wrong. The reality is that some of the questions on the CAT are easy enough for a school child to solve, if they just apply themselves properly. In any B-school you would be managing multiple tasks at the same time and working under tremendous pressure. This is what the CAT tests – ability to perform under pressure and not your conventional academic knowledge. There are a lot of people who do not crack it. It does not mean they are not smart enough – it’s just that they could not perform on the D-day.
Practice, practice, practice. This point was mentioned above and I repeat it again, albeit in a different context: practice alone will not help you crack CAT, targeted practice will. What this essentially means is that the number of tests you have taken does not impact your final performance. What matters is whether you have analysed those test results and have understood your strengths and weaknesses and then worked to improve on them. Post -test analysis of your performance is very important so that you can eliminate repeated mistakes.
Good reading habits are important only at the beginning your preparation. Sentence comprehension is ‘the key skill’ to cracking CAT. Hence reading is very important – not only will it help you with fine tuning your grammar, but also help you with para-jumbles, verbal reasoning as well as quantitative problems to an extent (especially ones that require comprehension of a large amount of data).
Practicing tough questions will help you more than practicing easier questions. Whether you find a particular question easy or difficult is dependent on your conceptual clarity. At the same time, questions that use multiple concepts are considered tough by the candidates. Over the years the number of such questions in CAT has come down drastically (speaking purely based on the experiences of test takers) and thus the number of super difficult questions you might have practiced does not matter a lot.
Skimming RC passages helps you save time. The RC passages in CAT have become shorter over the years and yet they require more analysis and interpretation to understand what the author implies. This is the reason where skimming fails. With more than 2 minutes to answer every question in CAT these days it is important that you spend sufficient time to read the passage (verbal aptitude questions do not take much time anyway), otherwise you would have to read the passage again to find the correct answer. This would make you anxious and more prone to committing errors.
All questions need to be answered to fare better. No matter how short the CAT test has become these days there will always be some questions/topics/concepts that you would not be comfortable with. It is better to leave those questions rather than to take it on your ego to solve every question that comes your way. The less number of questions does make the exam more competitive but the focus should first be on accuracy and then on maximizing the number of attempts.
I need to attempt all questions to counter ‘normalisation.’ This is one word that is thrown around a lot during discussions by candidates. Honestly, nobody actually knows what normalisation is and what is the process for the same simply because this information is not available in the public domain. Therefore instead of fretting over what normalisation is and how it might impact your scores, let prudence prevail and attempt the test as you would have normally done otherwise.
IIM Selection Criteria
These parameters include CAT 2012 scores, academic performance, work experience and diversity factors. Weightage given to each of these criteria varies between IIMs.
IIM A gives 70% weightage to CAT score. IIM C provides 77% weightage and IIM L allots 76% weightage. However, IIM B provides a meagre 20% weightage to CAT score. IIM B, C & L, apart from CAT score, also include past academic performance, work experience and diversity factor to short list candidates for the final round.
IIM Kozhikode provides 50% weightage to CAT scores along with high emphasis on past academic records (45%) and gender diversity (5%). IIM Indore gives no weightage to CAT score in short listing candidates while IIM Shillong includes scores of 10th & 12th standard exams in its short listing process.
IIM Rohtak & IIM Trichy will short list candidates based on CAT scores and past academic experience while IIM U & IIM Raipur use only CAT score for short listing.
IIM Kashipur has short listing criteria similar to IIM Lucknow. The institute provides weightages to CAT score (42%), past academic performance (6%) and diversity factor (7%).
PI assessment process & tools: Personal interview forms a very important role in the final selection. Being an interactive round, PI enables interviewers to have an idea about the thought process, personality and individuality of a candidate. All the IIMs provide high weightage to PI. IIM A provides 70% weightage to PI, while IIM C, IIM B and IIM L provide 44%, 20% and 30%, respectively.
Four out of six new IIMs provide 30% weightage to personal interview in the final selection. However, IIM Udaipur & Trichy provide 20% & 17%, respectively.
Final selection parameters: After short listing, comes the final selection round. The criteria for the final selection are WAT, group discussion and personal interview. In this round also, different IIMs follow different process and parameters.
IIM A provides 70% weightage to personal interview and allots no weightage to WAT and group discussion during final selection. However, WAT is given due 10-20% weightage by IIMs – IIM C (10%), IIM B (15%), IIM L (10%), IIM Indore (15%), IIM Kozhikode (20%), IIM Shillong (10%), IIM Ranchi (20%), IIM Kashipur (10%), IIM Udaipur (10%) and IIM Trichy (15%).
While IIM C provides 8% weightage to work experience in the final round, IIM B lays emphasis on both duration and quality of work experience with a combined weightage of 10%.
Out of the top 7 IIMs, only IIM Lucknow allots weightage to group discussion. However, IIM Shillong does consider a minimum performance criterion (25%) in GD.
Indian Bschools go for Global Accredition
Indian institutes are increasingly applying for international accreditation, including from bodies like the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), Association of MBAs (AMBA) and EQUIS, for getting into the list of global schools having coveted accreditation.
International Management Institute, Delhi, recently got the AMBA accreditation and is planning to apply for AACSB. Pritam Singh, director general, IMI, said they were one of the few institutes to get AMBA. “It is prestigious to have an international accreditation, as it proves you have standards matching the global level,” he said.
While applications for AACSB have increased, getting an accreditation may not be easy. According to Gurumurthy Kalyanaram, dean, University Research at Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), and professor and management consultant, very few Indian Institute of Managements (IIMs) have applied for AACSB and even if they do, it be may be challenging to get the accreditation.
AMBA has also seen a rise in applications. Carol Turner, spokesperson for AMBA, said five business schools in India have received AMBA accreditation — IIM-Kozhikode, IIM-Lucknow, IMI, Delhi, Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, and SP Jain Institute of Management and Research.
Turner said there were more business schools in India looking to gain global accreditation, and the number of business schools applying for Association of MBAs has increased in the last two years.
EQUIS accreditation is given by the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), and this has been granted to only IIM Bangalore and IIM Ahmedabad.
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International Management Institute, Delhi, recently got the AMBA accreditation and is planning to apply for AACSB. Pritam Singh, director general, IMI, said they were one of the few institutes to get AMBA. “It is prestigious to have an international accreditation, as it proves you have standards matching the global level,” he said.
While applications for AACSB have increased, getting an accreditation may not be easy. According to Gurumurthy Kalyanaram, dean, University Research at Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), and professor and management consultant, very few Indian Institute of Managements (IIMs) have applied for AACSB and even if they do, it be may be challenging to get the accreditation.
AMBA has also seen a rise in applications. Carol Turner, spokesperson for AMBA, said five business schools in India have received AMBA accreditation — IIM-Kozhikode, IIM-Lucknow, IMI, Delhi, Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, and SP Jain Institute of Management and Research.
Turner said there were more business schools in India looking to gain global accreditation, and the number of business schools applying for Association of MBAs has increased in the last two years.
EQUIS accreditation is given by the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), and this has been granted to only IIM Bangalore and IIM Ahmedabad.
CAT results out
CAT 2012 results out. Congrats to everyone who got above 95 percentile. Time for GD and PI.
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