The Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Lucknow has witnessed a record of over three lakh registrations for the Common Admission Test (CAT) this year. The registrations for CAT this year have seen a rise of around 30 per cent from last year. The 2022 applications saw an increase of around 11 per cent.
Last year, around 2.55 lakh candidates registered for the exam. While in 2021, around 2.31 students lakh registered for the same. The pandemic year 2020 saw about 2.77 lakh registrations.
More number of students have registered for the CAT this year as many reputed institutes and IITs will now consider the CAT score for admission process. Also, the increase in the number of exam centres in small cities have led to rise in the number of applications.
There is also an increase in the number of applications filed by women candidates this year. Out of the total registered candidates, 1.17 lakh are women. Exam convener Prof Sanjeet Singh noted that the rise in the number of women applicants can be because of the IIMs initiative to encourage more women candidates in the management institutes. Over the years, the gender diversity in some IIMs has improved significantly.
Besides this, around 35 per cent of the registered candidates are Engineers. In 2022, 11 candidates secured a 100 percentile, out of which 10 were engineers.
The exam is scheduled to be held on November 26.
The CAT was earlier conducted in a pen and-paper mode. The mode of examination has now been changed to computer-based test (CBT) mode. The first exam in the computer-based exam was held in 2009. The 2023 CAT will also be held in the CBT mode of 120 minutes. The test will be held in the following three sections- Section I Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension, Section II Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning and Section III Quantitative Ability.