MBA Entrance Exam

One should dedicate about 4 to 5 hour in a day for CMAT preparation. If you have started CMAT preparation six months before 4 to 5 hours daily will be good. But if you start preparation 3 months before CMAT exam, you will need to dedicate about 7 hours to exam preparation as you will have to cover a lot in less time. 

If you have appeared for CMAT before then you can prepare for another attempt only with mock tests as you would be already thorough with the syllabus and topics. You would also know your strengths and weakness. So, with CMAT mock tests, you will be able to revise and prepare accordingly. However, if you haven't appeared for CMAT or any national level MBA entrance exam before, you will need to cover the syllabus and then practice mock tests. In both scenarios, GK section will have to be prepared through year books. Only mock tests will not be helpful for CMAT GK.

Yes, you can prepare for CMAT from CAT books as Quantitative Aptitude, Logical Reasoning, English and Data Interpretation topics of CMAT are same as CAT. The CMAT difficulty level is lower than CAT. However, since CAT does not have GK and Innovation & Entrepreneurship sections, you will need CMAT specific books and study material for them.  

No, CMAT is not compulsory to get admissions into the PGDM course at Taxila Business School. As the institute accepts scores from other entrance examinations too for admissions to PGDM courses. Therefore, CMAT can be considered as one of the accepted entrance exams for admissions to the PGDM course. However, it is not compulsory. 

Yes, candidates with an 80th percentile score on the CAT exam might be able to get admissions to the MBA course at Taxila Business School. However, it is not definite because the cutoff released by the institution of shortlisted candidates does not rely only on the secured entrance exam. The cutoffs are released after evaluating and calculating several parameters for the MBA course. One component is sure that candidates who have secured 80% in CAT will get 18 % weightage out of 20% weightage in the parameters of the qualifying test score. Check out the scaling of qualifying test weightage in the below table: 

Yes, As MBA in Rural Management is a specaialized MBA programme you need to appear for national-level MBA entrance exams like CAT, XAT, CMAT, etc. After the exam, you'll go through GD-PI rounds and some colleges may test your interest in rural development through essays or group tasks.

Here is a special Pro tip for you: Start preparing early for GK and current rural issues as it really helps in interviews.