Saturday, December 02, 2006

I couldn't bell the CAT, should i settle for MAT?

The easy answer is NO. The gap between the institutes that you can make it to through the Commmon Admission Test or the CAT ( the six IIMs, MDI Gurgaon, MICA et cetera) and MAT ones ( Welingkar,Amity,BIMTECH,Alliance) is too huge and you can ignore it at your own peril. An MBBS is an MBBS and all MBBS are doctors. Not that all medical colleges are equal, but even if you pass out from the ones at the bottom, you are still a doctor and expect to make a very reasonable living.Unfortunately, as an MBA you may not be as lucky if you don't make it to a good b-school. Lots of the lower ranked b-schools cannot even guarantee you a minimum job, forget a career. So your choice of a b-school becomes critical - where you spend your next two years will decide how you will spend the rest of your life!

While dismissing the MAT is easy, belling the CAT is not so. Almost two hundred thousand people wrote the CAT this year and the IIMs have less than 2000 seats to offer. Even if you include the other good institutes where you can apply through the Common Admission Test, that number doesn't stretch to more than 4000. Let's not forget that out of those 2 lakh students who want to an MBA, more than 1.9 lakh will still not find a seat. What then? The first option is to write the next level of tests. If you are an engineer you can try for NITIE and the IITs through the JMET. If not, you should definitely write the FMS ( Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi ) Entrance and the XAT ( Xavier's Admission Test for XLRI Jamshedpur). Next in line are SNAP (Symbiosis National Aptitude Test), IIFT, IRMA and TISS.

Now, I have reached the point where I sincerely hope that you have made it to one of these places that I have mentioned. Because beyond this, you will really begin to compromise, the quality of the b-schools drop alarmingly, the kind of education and training you will be getting will be highly questionable and as a result of all these your career is bound to suffer.


(to be continued)

No comments: