Mumbai: Based on their permanent addresses, of the over 2.9 lakh IIM aspirants who appeared for Common Admission Test (CAT) 2024 on Nov 24, 50% were from Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, and West Bengal.
Maharashtra, in fact, had the highest number of CAT takers, said officials.
Information from IIM-Calcutta, the convening body of CAT 2024, showed that when it comes to preference of cities from where students have taken the exam, Karnataka made it into the top five states.
Of the 3.3 lakh IIM aspirants who registered for CAT 2024, over 2.9 lakh—36.5% of them were women—eventually took the test in 170 cities/towns in 27 states and five union territories on Nov 24.
A senior official from IIM-Mumbai said that students from Maharashtra also dominate their classrooms. At IIM-Mumbai, of the total 540 admitted students last year, 125 are from Maharashtra, followed by 62 from UP, 33 from MP, and 29 from Kerala among others.
“Maharashtra is one of the most industrialised and progressive states in the country. Students in states, such as Maharashtra and Delhi, have more avenues to get information and therefore the awareness levels could be high. They also have access to information on the ongoing trends in the job markets and there are also a higher number of opportunities here driving the interest in B-school education. The Hindi heartland still prefers more govt jobs, but the numbers could be higher also due to their population,” said the official.
Director of IIM-Indore Himanshu Rai said that one obvious reason could be the higher population in these five states. However, he added that some more granular data would be needed to study the trend in terms of cities, gender, and category.
The IIMs allowed the objections management exercise from Dec 3 to 5 and received over 400 objections. The highest numbers of objections, around 270, were raised in the verbal ability and reading comprehension paper conducted in the second of the three shifts on Nov 24. However, no changes were made by the IIMs after an expert committee review.
