KEA requested AICTE to conduct CMAT in May 2013

The Common Management Aptitude Test (CMAT), which is conducted every year for the MBA aspirants access around 3,000 AICTE approved B-schools in India. Now most of the states in India has approved to accept the CMAT scores for their Management courses admissions in AICTE affiliated colleges.

The Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) has requested the AICTE to hold another CMAT entrance test as only 3,000 students had applied for CMAT in Feb 2013. The AICTE conducted CMAT two time in Sept 2012 and Feb 2013, both had elicited poor response from the students in the state, who were expecting PGCET for admissions to MBA course.

The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), New Delhi decided to conduct another testing window of Common Management Admissions Test (CMAT) for MBA aspirants in May 2013. AICTE made the CMAT is the only test for MBA admissions under the government quota from the coming academic year 2013, instead of state's own postgraduate entrance test.

Initially, AICTE officials decided to hold CMAT Entrance test twice a year from academic year 2013-14 in order to bring more easier to the MBA aspirants.

S.S. Mantha, Chairman AICTE, said the council had considered the request from the Karnataka government and decided to grant another testing window for students who will not be able to write CMAT second test. Even, other state were requested to hold another CMAT test.

"CMAT entrance test will be conducted around mid-May for students in Karnataka, Kerala and Uttar Pradesh as the state governments had placed requests for this. During the AICTE council meeting recently, we decided to conduct another chance to students in these states to write the CMAT test," Mantha said.

Recently, The Karnataka state Government decided to scrap the PGCET (Postgraduate Common Entrance Test) for Management programmes admissions across the state from 2013. Now, state Govt decided that only CMAT scores will be considered for admission in post graduate MBA management programmes in All AICTE approved institutions and Universities from 2013-14 onwards.

He clarified that this would not be a third test, but only another opportunity for those who were not able to apply for either CMAT first and CMAT second test.

As of today, there are about 24,500 MBA seats under government quota in 436 colleges in the state. If any student want a MBA seat under government quota, he have to take CMAT entrance test compulsorily.

With the latest addition, the states that have already notified CMAT as the official exam for their state university MAB Programs are: Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Kerala, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Nagaland, Goa, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Haryana and Karnataka.