CAT 2017: Official Dates, Registration and Admission

(CAT) need to know about the important dates and notifications from the elite IIMs

For those preparing for Common Admission Test (CAT) need to know about the important dates and notifications from the elite Indian Institute(s) of Management. As per the official notification released by Neeraj Dwivedi of the IIM-L (Lucknow), the CAT 2017 will happen on November 26 (Sunday). The candidates need to keep in mind that the process of exam registration will begin on August 9 (Wednesday) and end on September 20 (Wednesday). This year, the exam will be organized by the IIM –L. The IIMs will organize the computer-based exam 140 test centres across the country in two sessions.

Candidates will have an option to select 4 Test Cities in order of preference.  The duration of the Exam will be 180 minutes. The CAT entrance examination is conducted for admission to these 20 IIMs and more than 100 institutes across India. The elite IIMs are at Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Bangalore, Bodh Gaya, Calcutta, Indore, Jammu, Kashipur, Kozhikode, Lucknow, Nagpur, Raipur, Ranchi, Rohtak, Sambalpur, Shillong, Sirmaur, Tiruchirappalli, Udaipur and Visakhapatnam. The IIMs will also release a tutorial to understand the format of the test on October 18. Candidates must work on the tutorials available on the website well in advance.

Important dates:

• Registrations the exam:  August 9
• Last date to apply: September 20
• Admit cards: October 18
• CAT 2017 Exam: November 26
• CAT 2017 Results: January 2018

The Applicants taking up the exam for the first time can go through the registration guide and video which will be made available on line in days to come. Keep in mind that the graduates must have at least 50% marks to be eligible to apply for CAT 2017 and 45% for the graduates under reserved categories. There will be separate notifications from IIM Ahmedabad, PGPEM & PGPPM Programmes of IIM Bangalore, EPGP of IIM Indore, EFPM & EPGPM of IIM Kashipur, PGP-ABM & PGP-SM of IIM Lucknow, PGPWE of IIM Raipur, PGDHRM of IIM Ranchi, EPGP of IIM Rohtak, PGPEX of RGIIM Shillong and PGPBM of IIM Tiruchirappalli for their management courses such as PGP-FABM & ePGP.

Note that the Registration fee is to be paid only once even if the applicant is applying for more than one institute. The CAT 2017 scores can be used by non-IIM member institutions. You can check out the list at iimcat.ac.in. The most important consideration is the validity of the CAT score card which is till 31 December 2018.

Normalization of CAT scores in 2017:
The exam will go through two sessions. Two different test forms shall be given in two test sessions. The scores shall be based on the process of Normalization that will adjust for location and scale differences of score distributions across different forms. Later on, the scores shall be further normalized across different sections. Check out the official website of IIM CAT for further details.

Admission process:
Admission to the IIMs is followed by Written Ability Test (WAT), Group Discussion (GD) and Personal Interviews (PI). The candidates’ previous academic scores, work experiences may be taken into consideration for short-listing.