CAT 2016 registration form will be enabled at 10AM on August 8, 2016 consisting of 5 pages and 32 management programmes offered by 20 IIMs. It may take much of your time to pick and choose – first the IIM and then the programme.
Unless you go through the CAT 2016 advertisement released on July 31, 2016, you may simply go on randomly clicking on various management programmes offered by IIMs without giving a serious thought to them at the time of finalizing your registration for CAT 2016. The Notification is available on CAT 2016 website.
What you should do
Past CAT toppers and CAT 2016 preparation expert Prof S K Agarwal advise that before proceeding to register for CAT 2016, it is very much necessary that you go through the list of all the programmes offered by IIMs and choose carefully out of them.
Make a list
It is advisable to prepare a list of all 32 management programmes offered by IIMs. It will help you to make correct choice of programme and preferred IIM.
Go through respective IIM site
Once you prepare the list of programmes, go to the site of each IIM and check the following-
-- Are you eligible for the respective programme?
-- Is the programme offered by your preferred IIM?
-- Contents/curriculum of the respective programme?
-- How it would help you in your career growth?
Update your list with chosen programmes
In order of preference, prepare a list of the management programmes and the IIMs. It is very much possible that you wish to join IIM Ahmedabad but the programme preferred by you is offered by some other IIM. Now you will have to decide whether the IIM is to be preferred or the programme. Now your list should be final going by your preferences.
No need to go for all 32 programmes or all 20 IIMs
You may not like to join one or other programme or would not prefer to join a particular IIM. So finalize your list only with the selected management programmes and leave the rest and close.
Understand the shortlisting criteria
Almost all the IIMs will shortlist you at a high sectional and overall percentile score in CAT 2016. Apart from this unless you have excellent academics to your credit and work experience also, you may not expect to be shortlisted by top IIMs. The minimum qualifying percentile prescribed by IIMs is the minimum eligibility criteria without which they will not shortlist you.
The actual cut off may go much higher.
Now if you opted for PGP at IIM Ahmedabad and did not consider any programme in new IIMs and your score in CAT 2016 is not very high, you will not be considered by those IIMs whose programmes were not selected by you.
Make sure you realize your potential and then prepare the list of IIMs and programmes in order of preference.
Choose Interview City for each IIM
After selecting the IIMs and the programmes offered by them, make sure that you mark on a piece of paper the interview city most convenient to you. For example if you belong to some small city but Mumbai or Delhi are convenient to you, you should select the preferred city for interview.
Please remember, there could be a clash of dates also for IIMs and Non-IIMs where you plan to appear for interview also. It will be better to go through the past PI process dates of respective B-schools so that you may not have to work out haphazardly on one or other date and the interview cities.
On registration day
With all the home work done, it will not take much of your time to click on the respective IIM, its management programme and the interview city where you wish to appear, if shortlisted.
CAT 2016 registration will be a time bound process, if you do not complete the details in half an hour, the site will close and in case the information is not saved, it will vanish and you will have to login again.
So make sure that the registration process is completed flawless and after giving a due thought in selecting the IIMs and their programmes.
CAT 2016 registration will close on September 22, and the exam will be held on December 4, 2016. The registration form will need your other details also. It is therefore advisable to keep all the information ready before starting the registration so that you are not stuck.
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Stay tuned to MBAUniverse.com for more updates on CAT 2016
