Common Admission Test
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Common Admission Test (CAT) is an all India test conducted by the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) as an entrance test for the management programmes of IIMs.
The CAT is almost certainly the world's most demanding entrance examination for any graduate institute. The test taker is expected to excel in arithmetic problem solving, geometry, statistics, data interpretation, logical reasoning in solving complex puzzles as well as being very strong in English language skills.
Also, there are around 150 questions to be solved in two hours and even 100 attempts could be considered very competitive. 130,000 students compete for less than 1000 general seats in the IIM's which makes it even more selective than all the Ivy League Universities put together. Even with a top 1% score, you need to be very competitive and very lucky to be considered for an admission. Usually a score in the top 0.5% would be preferable. A survey conducted by the Economist's MBA Rankings show that the test has an applicant to student ratio of 100:1, making it the most difficult B-school to gain admission into.
Competitive as it is, the CAT is the ideal examination to weed out students who cannot take the stress, skills and the hard work it takes to survive in the IIMs. That's all there is to the world's most demanding examination.
The entrance test conducted by Cochin University of Science and Technology is also known as CAT or Common Admission Test
Having said that CAT is the toughest exam, it's obvious that the taker has to be tougher. But there are ways for focussed preparation and scoring high.
There are umpteen number of coaching institutes spread across the country to help aspirants prepare for the CAT and their prescribed mantra to success is "Study Smart" instead of "Study Harder".