CAT, or the Common Admission Test, conducted by the Indian Institute of Management, allows you to pursue various MBA courses. Besides the IIMs, several other management colleges and institutes, including XLRI, TAPM, and MDI, accept CAT scores for many of their courses.
So, if you aspire to go through one of these courses, you must take the CAT exam. CAT opens the doorway to the premier B schools of the country. It prepares you to enhance your analytical and technical skills that are required in a job.
Importance of CAT Exam
Many students may want to pursue a MBA from a reputed institute or university. Once they complete their bachelor’s degree course, they aspire to study further. For this, they view MBA as a versatile course, and so, you have entrance exams like CAT. The CAT Syllabus in itself is of such advanced level that it prepares you to take decisions in favour of profit fo the company.
It prepares you directly for the senior management tasks, thereby, giving you the responsibility and ownership to choose from a range of specialisations such as Marketing, Advertising, Finance, Strategy, Consulting etc.
More than 3000 participating institutes
CAT is a national-level exam, and over 3000 B-Schools and management institutions consider the scores as a criterion for taking in students for various MBA and PGDM programs. You can visit BYJU’S Exam Prep for further information on this.
Excellent placement opportunities
All B-Schools and institutions that accept CAT scores for many of their reputed MBA and PGDM programs also offer excellent placement opportunities. These opportunities are primarily at the management levels in various MNCs across the country and the world. Moreover, every year, all the IIMs achieve 100% placements.
An exam to assess your knowledge and skills
CAT evaluates your skills and knowledge on different levels. So, by assessing your skills and expertise in areas like Quantitative Aptitude, Data Sufficiency, Data Interpretation, Verbal Ability, Reading Comprehension, Logical and Analytical Reasoning, the exam equips you to handle the roles and responsibilities of the corporate world.
Opportunities for a lucrative career
By writing the CAT exam, you can pursue various management programmes, such as MBA and PGDM, and secure jobs at the management level of reputed organisations. You can enter an organisation as a mid to mid-senior-level manager with an MBA. In contrast, you would start as an associate by pursuing other degree courses.
Tips to Prepare for CAT Exam
It would help if you secure at least 90 percentile in the CAT exam for a chance to pursue a management course in a reputed institution. Moreover, several studies have shown that achieving this score isn’t as hard as it seems, primarily if you can focus and prepare well.
So, if you are looking to ace the CAT exam, here are a few tips that will help you in your preparation.
Split Your Preparation
Studying everything together isn’t going to be of much help. It would help if you first planned your preparation for competitive exams like CAT. Ideally, it would help if you split your studies into different sessions. For instance, if you plan to study nine hours a day, you should split those nine hours into two sessions of four hours each, with an hour’s break.
Take Breaks
When preparing for exams like CAT, you mustn’t study continuously throughout the day and you must take breaks. You can also divide the one-hour break that you have set aside into 15 minutes each after you have finished one of the sessions. That way, you can focus better and ace the exam.
Stay Focused and Motivated
Another vital aspect when preparing for highly competitive exams like CAT is to stay focused and motivated. Without the required focus and motivation, all your efforts are futile. So, it’s essential to focus on what you are studying, and more importantly, with high spirits, to crack the exam.
Every year, hundreds of students take up the CAT exam. As a student who aspires to write the CAT exam and pursue a management course in a reputed institution, don’t forget to prepare rigorously for it, and more importantly, stay focused and motivated. Moreover, you can also refer to websites like BYJU’s Exam Prep where you will find tons of resources that will help you to prepare for and crack competitive exams like CAT.
