A total of 70,000 applicants have registered for the Common Management Aptitude Test (CMAT) 2012 after the deadline of January 22, 2012, SS Mantha, chairman of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) confirmed to PaGaLGuY on Monday.
In addition, out of the 3,500 AICTE-approved management institutes in the country, only 2,000 have officially registered with the regulator stating that they will accept CMAT scores for 2012 admissions, Mantha added.
CMAT is a three-hour online paper that will be executed on-ground by Aptech Computer Education. While Aptech had been hoping for a total registration number of 2.5 lakhs for the CMAT, Pravir Arora, executive vice president of Aptech said that the company was happy about the initiative taken by AICTE and would do their best to ensure that the first edition of the test was conducted in a smooth manner.
CMAT is a historic step by the AICTE. It aims at reducing the students financial burden and also the logistics-related stress of filling in a multitude of forms. We will make sure that the test is conducted smoothly in all the designated 61 centres across the country, Arora told PaGaLGuY.
Earlier this month, AICTE had postponed the final CMAT registration date from January 9 to 22, 2012, citing the announcements about joining the CMAT fold by state universities in Maharashta, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. However, while state universities have given positive feelers about CMAT, many private AICTE-approved b-schools have stated that they will not accept CMAT scores this year.
Fr E Abraham SJ, director of Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI), Jamshedpur said, We are waiting for the final Supreme Court decision in the matter. All management institutes have their own admission criteria, according to which they set their exam pattern. It is unfair to ask them to adhere to a common management exam.
Goa Institute of Management as well as the Institute of Management Technology (IMT) at Nagpur and Hydrabad are some of the institutes accepting CMAT scores for 2012.