CAT Exam or Common Admission Test is considered one of the most competitive exams in India and is held for admissions into many of the best MBA colleges in India. Some of the colleges which attract the aspirants to the exam are:
The CAT Exam is held by the Indian Institute of Managements (IIMs) with the particular institute anchoring it, changing every year. Over 2 lakh aspirants usually register for CAT and over 1.9 lakh usually appear for it which means that the selection ratio for the top ten colleges is approximately 3200 out of the 1.9 lakhs appearing for the exams which leaves a ratio of 1.68% students getting selected for the top 10 colleges.
Even before the CAT 2019 Notification is released, we can speculate about the exam by looking at the college which is conducting CAT this year. For CAT 2019, the conducting body is IIM Kozhikode. However, while it may give an indicator of the paper, it does not hold true in all circumstances.
As mentioned above, the CAT Exam is held for admissions into some of the best MBA colleges in India. Some of these colleges, apart from the IIMs include:
The CAT Exam Notification 2019 is expected to be announced in July, 2019. Following this, the CAT Exam Notification this is explained further below:
The CAT 2019 notification will be released in all the newspaper dailies as has been the practice in CAT 2018 notification and CAT Exam notification before that. The CAT 2019 Notification may contain the following details:
The CAT Exam Date 2018 and CAT Exam Date 2017 should give the candidate a good idea of the expected CAT Exam Date 2019. Also the CAT 2019 Preparation can be better structured if the candidate has an idea of the CAT Exam Date 2019 which can be derived from the CAT Exam Date 2018 and CAT Exam Date 2017.
Until the official dates are released, the CAT 2018 Notification includes Important Dates and the CAT Exam Date 2018 can act as a guideline to the approximate timeline and how the aspirant can plan for the preparation of the exam. Some of these important dates are mentioned below:
| Details | Date |
|---|---|
| CAT 2018 Notification | 29th July, 2018 |
| CAT 2018 Registration Start | 8th August, 2018 |
| CAT 2018 Registration Deadline | 19th September, 2018 |
| CAT 2018 Admit Card Release | 24th October, 2018 |
| CAT 2018 Exam Date | 25th November, 2018 |
| CAT 2018 Result Declaration | 5th January, 2018* (Preponed) |
In order to establish a trend, we can look at the CAT 2017 Notification so that we can check the important dates including the CAT 2017 Exam Date. This will give also give the aspirant an idea about the timeline. The important dates regarding the CAT 2017 Notification are:
| Details | Date |
|---|---|
| Details | Date |
| CAT 2017 Notification | 30th July, 2017 |
| CAT 2017 Registration Start | 9th August, 2017 |
| CAT 2017 Registration Deadline | 20th September, 2017 |
| CAT 2017 Admit Card Release | 18th October, 2017 |
| CAT 2017 Exam Date | 26th November, 2017 |
| CAT 2017 Result Date | 8th January, 2018 |
On the basis of CAT 2018 Important Dates, we can tentatively estimate the dates for the CAT 2019 Notification and Registration:
Since CAT is an admission exam for a Post-Graduate Program, the minimum qualification that any candidate should have is that of a graduate or a professional course with at least 50% marks by aggregate. Further details about the CAT 2019 Eligibility Criteria will be given on this page.
The final date for the CAT 2019 Registration will be announced in the CAT 2019 Notification. However, the previous year's trends gives us a brief idea about the approximate start and final date for CAT 2019.
Each candidate has to fill out the CAT 2019 application form from the official CAT 2019 site in order to appear for the exam. The steps in filling out the CAT 2019 Application forms are detailed below:
Some of the documents required for this process includes:
The CAT exam 2019 syllabus is expected to remain the same as the syllabus for CAT 2018. There are three sections in the form of:
The VARC and QA sections consists of 34 questions while the DILR section consists of 32 questions.
Each MCQ questions has a marking scheme of +3/-1 while the TITA question has no negative marking which makes the marking scheme +3/0. Each section is allocated 1 hour without exception and time is not carried over from one section to the other. Therefore the candidate needs to be competent across all sections rather than scoring heavily in any one or two sections. In the same spirit, there is usually sectional cutoffs for most of the better colleges.
The VARC section is majorly interpretation based and not vocabulary due to which it does not have a fixed syllabus. Thus reading level and grammar rules of Class X and some practice would allow the candidate to adequately prepare for the CAT exam 2019 syllabus for the VARC section.
The DILR section has not fixed exam syllabus and only practice of different types of sets can be done for preparation by the aspirants.
The QA section, like the VARC section, consists of topics from the CBSE Class X syllabus. The major topics in QA include:
The complete CAT exam 2019 syllabus can be found on this page.
The CAT Exam Date is always a matter of speculation and anticipation for candidates each year. There have been a few moments of controversy regarding the CAT Exam Date over the year. For Example, the CAT Exam Date for 2016 had clashed with the dates for the IIFT Exam. This had several candidates in a panic since a majority of candidates give both the IIFT Exam and CAT Exam in order to boost their chances of getting into the best B-School possible. However this controversy was settles after the IIMs decided to shift the CAT Exam to January so that there was no clash and the candidates did not miss out on any option.
The CAT Exam Dates for the past 5 years reveal the trend of the CAT Exam being held in the month of November, usually at the end of November. The CAT Exam Date of 2016 was an exception due to the reasons mentioned above.
| Year | CAT Exam Date | CAT Exam Date Slot 2 |
|---|---|---|
| CAT 2018 | 25-11-2018 | |
| CAT 2017 | 26-11-2017 | |
| CAT 2016 | 4-12-2016 | |
| CAT 2015 | 29-11-2015 | |
| CAT 2014 | 16-11-2014 | 22-11-2014 |
The CAT Exam 2019 result will be uploaded on the official website (https://iimcat.ac.in) and each candidate will be able to download his/her scorecard in its entirety after logging in. The CAT Exam result will be applicable only for the current academic year and will be declared in the second week of January, 2020 tentatively.
This page will updated once the official dates are declared.