AICTE's CMAT notifiation out

The notification and dates of the Common Management Admissions Test (CMAT), the new MBA entrance exam launched by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE’s) are finally public. There are nearly two months to go for the exam, which will be conducted from February 20 to 28, 2012 in two shifts across 61 cities as a computer-based test.

A notification released by the AICTE on Sunday stated that the AICTE’s first national level online test for management students will be open for registration for a month-long period starting from December 9, 2011 to January 9, 2012. The test will cost Rs 1,200 for General/OBC candidates and Rs 600 for SC/ST/PD candidates. There will be additional bank charges, whether you are buying the form from State Bank of Indian branches or making an online payment.

A three-hour test, AICTE says that CMAT scores will help applicants seek admissions across all management programmes at AICTE-approved Institutions, amounting to about 4 lakh MBA seats on paper.

The test will comprise four sections — Quantitative Techniques and Data Interpretation, Logical Reasoning, Language Comprehension and General Awareness. Each section will have 25 questions and weigh 100 marks — that’s 4 marks per question. There will be negative marking of one mark for each wrong answer.

It is the first time that AICTE is undertaking an entrance test of this scale. The entrance exam came out of an interim Supreme Court decision in which it asked AICTE in July 2011 to not meddle in affiliated b-schools’ admission process for the current admission year, and start its own test if it did not believe in the existing ones.Aptech will execute the computer-based test on the behalf of AICTE after landing the contract post the tender process.

Institutes accepting CMAT:

4000+ B-Schools recognised by AICTE are expected to accept the CMAT.  

No. of seats available through CMAT:

Approximately 1.6 lac seats will  be available across the country through the CMAT. 

CMAT Test Eligibility:                     

Graduates with 50% in any discipline. Final year students of Graduate Courses can also apply. 

Expected No. of Students taking CMAT:

The CMAT 2012 is expected to be administered to about 250,000 candidates all over India and abroad.

 

List of Test Centres for CMAT:

The CMAT 2012 will be conducted in 23 Indian (States and Union Territories) covering the following 61 cities:

Annual placements of top business Schools

Annual placements by academic institution, which offers both students and employers the best employment choices, is a popular recruitment tool all over the world. Its comparison to a cattle fair where animals are sold to the highest bidder is insulting. That holds even if the idea is to reduce competition and beat down salaries in a rapidly weakening market, and therefore the sort of ploy an HR honcho might come up with. Students choose employers according to their priorities, be it maximum salaries, industry, location or the brand name they fancy. That's only natural, including taking earnings as a fair, if crude, indicator of professional success. After all, if companies can look to maximise their profits, why can't business students who will bw working for those companies?

Apart from the apparent benefits that campus recruitments provide to both students and employers, they also serve broader societal goals. For instance, success in annual placements is taken as a proxy of the quality of the institution. This is important in a country like India where education standards are highly skewed and the few quality rankings available are often biased. Similarly placement drives provide academic institutions important feedback from employers on different courses and the changing needs of industry, which helps fine-tune education. Annual placements, therefore, are a good market mechanism that helps boost careers, employment choices and the quality of education.

Perfect pitch : Steve Jobs in B- school syllabus

As the world is still in awe of Steve Jobs innovation, a B - school here is exploring the managerial skills that made him the best CEO of the decade.

Bangalore's Institute of Finance and International Management (IFIM) has introduced Steve Jobs as part of their curriculum. The life and works of Jobs will be studied in detail by the management students in semester four as a part of their topic on leadership. The students will study the qualities that made him an iconic businessman who transformed the lifestyle of people around the world with human technology interaction.

"Everything in business comes down to the product. Breakthrough innovation requires creativity, and creativity requires that we think differently. Steve Jobs constantly tried to explore and innovative to change the world.''. "Jobs was more concerned with perfectionism. That must have made him real micro manager. He has based the leadership culture of Apple on brand fanaticism and radical customer devotion. The unadulterated loyalty often involves brand - centric fan groups. Steve Jobs and Apple not only created a great Apple community, but Steve himself was a great brand fanatic.

Ten 21st Century Education Quotes I Carry With Me

Here are ten 21st Century education quotes that I've heard over the past few years that I liked enough to save in my Blackberry so I could look at, remember, and share. These are ten quotes that have been of value to me and I believe will be of value to other innovative educators as well. If I remember or know where they came from, I've indicated it below.

1-Technology is only technology to those who were born before it.
2-We need to prepare students for THEIR future not OUR past-Ian Jukes, educator and Futurist.
3-Teachers need to stop saying, “Hand it in,” and start saying “Publish It.” Alan November
4-We have moved from “know what” learning to “know where” learning.
5-The largest number of podcasts in education are about Podcasts in education.-Marco Torres.
6-Kids DO want to learn, but schools get in the way.
7-Digital Media enables us to build more stages for our kids to express themselves. - Marco Torres
8-What gets us in trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know that just ain't so. Mark Twain.
9-We need to replicate in the classroom the world in which students are living.
10-If we teach today the way we were taught yesterday we aren't preparing students for today or tomorrow.

A well formed quote, like a picture, is a great method for painting detailed concepts. I love collecting these quotes and knowing how they’ve affected others. If one of these quotes affects you or if there is a quote that has affected you that you’d like to share please do by commenting on this post.

AICTE not to approve more part-time MBA courses due to misuse by Institutes

A senior AICTE official said, there are many B-schools around which are misusing the facility and running other programmes on the pretext of a part-time MBA programme.

They are not working within the regulated framework, which prompted us to take this step.The experts said this change could affect around 400 colleges and 20,000 students. These figures could not be verified with AICTE. Several calls to AICTE Chairman S S Mantha went unanswered. There are around 2,500 AICTE-approved management schools.
The B-schools concerned are unhappy. “Experienced people learn management much better than freshers. We have around 240 students for masters’ courses in management, finance, human resource and information management. We have already requested the vice-chancellor of the University of Mumbai to take up the matter with AICTE,” said Suresh Ghai, director, K J Somaiya Institute of Management and Research.
The three B-school’s directors said by this the higher education would be more costly than before and prevent growth and development of many working professionals.
According to a human resource director of a textile company, part-time management programmes allow employees to add knowledge.