CAT 2018 to be held on November 25 in two sessions in 147 cities

Kolkata: The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) will conduct the Common Admission Test (CAT) 2018 on November 25. The registrations for CAT 2018 will begin on August 8 and will end on September 19. IIM (Calcutta) said that CAT 2018 will be conducted in two sessions at various test centres in across 147 cities. 

Candidates will be given the option to select four test cities in order of preference. The cities and centres will be assigned after September 19 when the registration ends, Convenor-CAT 2018, Prof Sumanta Basu said in a statement.

The authorities will do their best to assign candidates their first-preferred city and will be allotted an alternative city if the city of preference cannot be assigned. "In case that is not possible, the candidates will be assigned a city following their given order of preference. And in the rare case that a candidate is not allotted any of the preferred cities, he/she will be allotted an alternative city," Basu said.

The examinees will not be able to select the session, as it will be assigned randomly.

After applications are submitted, the candidates can download their admit card from October 24 onwards, till the date of the test. The CAT 2018 will be divided into three sections - Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension, Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning, and Quantitative Ability.

A tutorial to understand the format of the test will be available on the CAT website from October 17. 

Eligibility:

The candidate must hold a Bachelor’s Degree, with at least 50% marks or equivalent CGPA [45% in case of the candidates belonging to Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Persons With Disability (PWD) categories], awarded by any University or educational institution as incorporated by an Act of the Parliament or State legislature in India or declared to be deemed as a University under Section 3 of the UGC Act, 1956, or possess an equivalent qualification recognized by the Ministry of HRD, Government of India. The percentage of marks obtained by the candidate would be calculated based on the practice as followed by the respective University/Institution.

In case of grades / CGPA, the conversion to percentage of marks would be based on the procedure as certified by the respective University/ institution. If any University/institution confirms that there is no scheme for converting CGPA into equivalent marks, the equivalence would be established by dividing the candidate’s CGPA by the maximum possible CGPA, and multiplying the result with 100. Candidates appearing for the final year of Bachelor’s degree/equivalent qualification examination and those who have completed degree requirements and are awaiting results can also apply. However, it may be noted that such candidates, if selected, will be allowed to join the programme provisionally, only if they submit a certificate from the Principal / Registrar of their University/institution (issued on or before the date as stipulated by the respective IIM) stating that they have completed all the requirements for obtaining the Bachelor’s degree/equivalent qualification on the date of the issue of the certificate. IIMs may verify eligibility at various stages of the selection process.