CAT—Cranfield Admission Test

Cranfield offers the Cranfield Admission Test (CAT) as an alternative to the GMAT. Normally the CAT is only available to students who are able to attend the campus in the UK.

FOR 2012, Cranfield will be offering the Cranfield Admission Test in Sydney on 27th February (final details will be confirmed on Venue details for CAT).

We cannot be certain that we will offer this option in future years so even if you are thinking of applying for a later year (after 2012) it makes sense to do the Cranfield Admission Test while you have the chance. If you are able to get to Sydney to sit this test we would strongly advise you to do so.

Details of the Cranfield Admission test are here:
http://www.som.cranfield.ac.uk/som/p16119/Programmes-and-Executive-Development/MBA/Making-your-application/Sample-Cranfield-admission-tests

The Cranfield Admission Test (CAT) has been designed to ensure that candidates who study at Cranfield will cope with an extremely demanding learning environment. However, because the Cranfield test is used by Cranfield alone, it does have some characteristics which differ from the GMAT test.

GMAT Vs Cranfield Admission Test 
More than 260,000 people take the GMAT each year, and the GMAT has been designed to ensure that the testing scores are graduated enough to create a “bell curve” of results.

In Australia, our educational system develops high levels of verbal and literacy skills and permits the use of calculators for maths. Thus our experience with Australian applicants sitting the GMAT is that they tend to obtain extremely high scores in the Verbal section and lesser scores on the Quantitative section, reflecting their somewhat rusty mental arithmetic skills. Until we changed our GMAT advice  and encouraged applicants to drill themselves on mental calculations, we had excellent candidates who did not meet the 600 cutoff score required by Cranfield at the GMAT who then who did not have time to resit and thus missed out on that year’s deadline.

The KEY benefit in sitting the CAT, is that you can use a calculator! 

That leaves you with one less thing to stress over and will allow you to focus your practice on the types of questions to be answered. Taking the CAT means that you will be able to do the test and interview here in Australia, get the results straight away and because it is paper based you can review all questions and then go backwards and forwards to answer them in the order you wish as well as being able to return to a question should you wish to do that. The CAT is shorter in time, with two thirty minute sections.

But it is challenging; you will still need to practice and all the GMAT resources on the website are relevant:

http://cranfieldalumni.org.au/how-to-apply/gmat-help/http://cranfieldalumni.org.au/frequently-asked-questions/gmat/

If you have sat the GMAT and obtained your 600 score, you do not need to sit the Cranfield Admission Test.
If you have sat the GMAT and not reached the 600 score cutoff – you can either re-sit the GMAT or sit the CAT and have your application assessed on the CAT results.
If you have not yet sat the GMAT, you can take either test.

There is no charge to sit the CAT!

To assist in planning for February 2012 we need for you to Register and then reply to the Welcome Email and advise ASAP:

1 Your name:
2 Year you are thinking of applying:
3 What State you are resident in:
4 If you wish to sit the Cranfield Admission Test:
5 Any travel issues you may have that we need to take into account.

The earlier you do this, the better, but at any rate please reply by 7th Feb 2012 if possible.

We propose to hold the CAT on an afternoon, which will ensure that those travelling will not get caught by any problems with Sydney airport. We will also arrange refreshments and a “meet the alumni” session after the test, leaving time for those travelling to depart Sydney airport by around 7.30pm.