CAT 2011 registration window closed on Tuesday, and 205 000 to register candidates. Of these, 73 percent were men. This is a bit 'more than last year, 204,000 were registered. In 2008, about 276,000 candidates appeared in CAT, which fell to 240 000 in 2009.

Janakiraman Moorthy, promoter, CAT 2011, IIM faculty member of Calcutta, had earlier told Business Standard, as the economic condition of India, IIM expected five to 10 percent increase in applications this year.

The wait was also due to the fact that many business schools had decided to accept CAT scores as admission criteria. Last month, for access to their business schools, Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) has decided to end ten years of research, management of common test input, and accept the results instead of CAT. So another 10 non-IIM schools, bringing the total number of non-acceptance of the institutes IIM CAT score to 165.

This is the importance of CAT increased significantly for students. According to one student from a premier B-School, The Cat "was not a good indicator of the potential of the student, with a standard statistical tests becomes easier with age. Growing dependence on government departments CAT scores can and will seriously hamper the quality of incoming students. "

While B-schools that use registration IIM CAT 2012 scores pay an initial fee of Rs 2.5 lakh, regular B-schools pay RS 2 lakh per year.

This year the CAT will be conducted in a new format, with only two sections instead of three. The first part will focus on the ability and interpretation of quantitative data, and the other on verbal ability and logical reasoning. There will be different maturities. The study will be 140 minutes, in which candidates have 70 minutes to answer 30 questions in each section, which will have a countdown on the screen. When time ends the first chapter, they will go to another and will not be able to return.

"With the introduction of the new format, we want to see how it helps the candidates to focus on specific content. Under the new format, the candidates can focus on any department they work, and it will not give an unfair advantage to strong candidates in a special section, "said Moorthy.

Because of this change in format, engineering students, most often in the wrong section of the verbal, very happy to have a logical reasoning to the bank then. Similarly, students of humanities, with its anguish normally quantitative skills, find a possible interpretation of data backup.

Three new cities - Bhilai, Dehradun and Jammu - has been added to the previous 33 test locations. City, where most of the candidates will be tested in New Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Pune.