Cat craze declines among students

Prof. Rohit Kapoor, convenor of CAT 2014 and professor at Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indore (coordinating IIM for CAT 2014), said, “The number is 3,000 more than last year.”

Students also feel that with a lot of job opportunities this year it would be better to work for at least one year before they migrated to B-schools for MBA or PG programmes in IIMs.

“I want to pursue an MBA but mostly B-schools don’t prefer fresh graduates. A candidate with a minimum of two-year experience will have a better chance to join a B-school. Because of this I am planning to sit for recruitment this year and get back to academics two years later,” said V. Ragul, a Final Year B.Tech Computer Science student.

It is not only the work experience factor that the students think of but also the volatile job market, which makes them think twice before taking up MBA.

“It’s not that I don’t aspire to join a post-graduate programme in one of the top IIMs but I am not certain whether I will get a job three years later after MBA as the industry scenario changes every year,” said D. Sujatha, a B.Com Final Year student.

However experts point out that the craze for management education still continues with top B-schools, including IIMs getting hundreds of applications for a single seat.

Pointing out that of the 1.97-lakh applications, numerous candidates could be professionals with at least one-year work experience, Prof. L.S. Ganesh, professor at department of Management Studies at IIT-Madras, said that though the number of MBA aspirants taking up CAT had come down, the craze still continued. “One should look at the number of applications IIMs and top B-schools get,” he said.

Adding to Prof. Ganesh’s view, Prof. P.T. Srinivasan, head of Management Studies department at University of Madras, said that the number of CAT applicants would go up in the near future as they saw management students getting into top positions in companies.