CAT 2021 Form Filling | Ready Reckoner | Step by Step Guide
CAT 2021 Forms are out! We are all in a frenzy to fill the same. There are mistakes that lots of students do repeatedly. Here is a compendium of frequently asked questions regarding CAT 2021 Form filling. This blog article is supposed to help you through CAT 2021 Form Filling and make it a seamless process.
We will also discuss the ideas in order in which the form has. If you want a visual guide/walkthrough for CAT Form filling, watch this video. In this blog, we will try to address doubts not touched upon in the video. In case your doubts are not answered in this blog, post it in the comments. We will answer the same.
Personal Details
There is a new field called Surname / First Name. If you happen to have a family name / surname, go ahead and use it. If not, then fill in your first name. For instance Bharathwaj Udayakumar does not have a family name/surname. Udayakumar is my father’s name. So Bharathwaj is what I am supposed to fill in the field called Candidates Surname/Firstname.
Category:
If you belong to EWS category, keep your form ready. If you do not have the form yet, IIMCAT lets you sign an undertaking and upload it in place of the actual certificate. The undertaking can be found in this link, or below.
The undertaking is applicable for NC-OBC, SC and ST categories as well.
NC-OBC
There are usually several doubts attached to NC-OBC. We will try to answer them as much as we can. Before that, if you want to know if your caste falls under OBC, head out here (http://www.ncbc.nic.in/user_panel/centralliststateview.aspx) and click on your state/UT name(for eg, if you belong to Tamilnadu, this will be the link: http://www.ncbc.nic.in/user_panel/GazetteResolution.aspx?Value=mPICjsL1aLv%2b2hza1cVSjGj2lbN6VTmq%2fWN4CcSyOxTDAvIblVnkv9NFuhO%2bdz42) to find your caste name. If it is listed, then you can think about NC-OBC, provided your family income is less than 8 lakhs per annum (not including your salary).
Kindly watch this video to compare if your Certificate is eligible or not.
How to fill in the details?
If you know your certificate is indeed eligible, now how to fill the details required in the CAT Form?
- State/ Union Territory of Category, fill in which state your Caste belongs to.
- Serial / Entry / Certificate Number of Category (if you belong to Tamilnadu, and your Category is Agamudayar, then your Serial / Entry number is 1) is the number to the left of the category name in the respective State/ Union territory page.
- Caste / Tribe name is the name according to the Central list of OBCs.
e-Signed version is accepted?
If you have obtained your certificate through e-seva centers and is digitally signed, it is still accepted.
How to upload? What does Attestation mean?
Kindly take a print out of the NC-OBC certificate (in case you were given a digitally signed copy), or take a photocopy (in case of a manually signed copy) and sign on it (self attest) and scan (do not use mobile scanners) with a good old printer/scanner and upload the same.
SC – ST
My certificate format is not like the one provided in iimcat website. As long as it conveys all the relevant information, it is completely okay even if it looks different from the iimcat format. Again, take a photocopy and self attest it and upload.
Uploads
Photo and Signature
Have a photo that is professional, not taken from the sides, not wearing coolers, taken having a white BG (not blue/red backgrounds), has a soft and hard copy (you will need to use the exact photo hard copy with your hall ticket).
Photograph needs to be 35mmx45mm (breadth vs height) and cannot be more than 1 mb in size. Format has to be JPG or JPEG. It cannot be png, tiff etc.
Signature needs to be visible in the photo. Previously there used to be size (dimension) restrictions for this as well, looks like this has been removed this year. The file size restriction is 80kb for signature.
Use paint/powerpoint to resize photos. Use tinypng for reducing size.
Academics
The earlier column requests the maximum marks, the latter column asks for your marks (kind of counter intuitive). Be careful as to what you fill. Do not mix the two.
Please enter correct Percentage
If the Percentage of marks throws an error like this “cdn.digialm.com says: Please enter correct percentage”. Fret not.
We will discuss two examples of accepted percentage. Based on these, you should be able to figure out your percentage in the correct format.
437/500 Accepted 87.4, not accepted 87.40
1163/1200 Accepted 96.92, not accepted 96.9 & 96.91
CGPA to Percentage Conversion
CBSE 10th
What if you had 5 subjects in class 10?
Then in that case multiply your CGPA by 9.5 to get the percentage, and then multiply the percentage of marks you scored by 5 to get your actual marks.
Your CGPA*9.5 = Your % marks
Your % * 5 = Your marks
Total marks will be 500
But, What if you had 6 subjects in class 10?
Very simple, in that case multiply your CGPA by 9.5 to get the percentage, and then multiply the percentage of marks you scored by 6 to get your actual marks
UG CGPA to Percentage Conversion
Your undergraduation certificate will carry details of CGPA to percentage conversion (either in the front or back of the official certificates). If not, you will need to find out the same. 2 instances we know of are listed below.
1. Anna university => Multiply by 10. 8.8 becomes 88 Percentage.
2. Mumbai university => (7.25*cgpa)+11. If your CGPA is 8, then your percentage is (7.25*8) +11 = 69.
I do not have my marksheets
If you do not have marksheets for a few semesters, but know the correct marks, use those and fill in the form. Do not wait to have a marksheet.
I do not have my marks
If you do not have any marks at all (covid batches et.al), reach out to the helpdesk on information as to how to fill your form.
Work Experience
Industry
Industry should reflect the industry that your organization belongs to, and not what your role belongs to.
You can be a software engineer in a bank. You should select Banking/Financial services. You should not select IT/Technology
You can be a sale person in a plastic material selling firm. You should select Engineering/Industrial and not Others.
Break in Experience – CAT 2021 Form
The column break in experience is to collect information about any long breaks between the dates stated as the starting and ending date of an experience. It does not have anything to do with breaks between jobs.
What courses to pick? What not to?
Do not fret about that now. The easiest, and safest way is to pick all the courses listed. And worry about it when you get calls. Do not worry about pgp, fpm, abm, etc. All of those do not have to make sense.
If you are picky the downside is, it is very easy to miss out on a great college or opportunity and regret later. Might as well select all the boxes and not worry about it today and let your future you handle all these (at least you will not have anything to regret related to this).
Test City filling – CAT 2021 Form filling
Keep in mind the closeness of the city and pick. If you are working in a city now, and lockdowns might be thrown at us anytime, and the city of your choosing could be thousands of kms away from where you might be in November. Think through all of these when selecting cities as your test city preference. Do not regret later.
Obviously there is no one right answer, and we do not have a crystal ball to predict where we will be in November. But a calculated guess can go a long way than an ignorant choice.
Check, Recheck
There is no downside to checking things twice over. Before making the payment, you can change anything, any number of times. Once you are done with the payment, you cannot change anything. If you indeed need to change something, the only way is to use a different email address and phone number and register as a new student in the website. Better to not hurry too much, but think through before submitting.
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