The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) will conduct a nationwide common test for admission to over 4,000 business schools across the country, from next year.

The scores of the Common Management Admission Test (CMAT) will, though, not be valid for admissions into Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and other top B-schools.

“Not all institutions can be categorized as A-level schools. There are institutions which come under the B and C category,” says Renu Bapna, the advisor with the council, who is also the in-charge of the exam.

The 4,000 business schools have around four lakh intake and all these institutions are AICTE approved.

The computer-based examination will have four sections each containing 25 questions. Each correct question will have four marks and for every wrong question one mark will be deducted. The exam will be at par with the Common Admission Test (CAT) but the difficulty level of the exam will be comparatively low. 68 percent of the questions will be easy, 24 percent will be moderate and just 8 percent questions will be tough. More or less it will have the same pattern like the CAT.

The test designed for non-IIM institutes will be a three-hour-long computer based examination, to be held twice daily over a period of nine days. It will be conducted in 61 cities. Student can appear for the examination on any day from February 20 to 28.

“If there will be requests from other cities we will conduct the exam there too,” adds Bapna.

The online registration has started from Friday and students can even deposit the fee through online. In case the student does not have access to the internet, they can pay the fee by challan as well.

Before the exam the council is conducting the pilot test on Saturday across 10 states including Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad to take the response from students.

The initiative has been taken to reduce the stress among students says Bapna. “The students have to go through number of entrance examinations conducted by the AICTE approved management institutions. This will help them to concentrate more on their studies.”

The Council is leaving no stone unturned to make sure that the CMAT does not suffer from technical problems of the kind that the CAT suffered when it went online.

“We are hopeful that everything goes smooth. We have the back-up arrangements also,” says Bapna.

Last year just two hours before the All India Engineering Entrance Exam (AIEEE) the paper was leaked. The Council does not want to repeat it. For this, the Chief Controller of the exam will get to know the examination password only an hour before the exam and the student will get it only five minutes before the exam.

CMAT, though, is entirely managed by the AICTE, for the software the council is taking the help from the outside agency.