Photo: Niyam Bhushan

Only last week, we had reported that the Maharashtra management Common Entrance Test (Mah-CET) 2012 had been postponed by two weeks to March 11, 2012 to make way for the dates booked by the All Indian Council of Technical Education (AICTE) for its Common Management Admission Test (CMAT).

Not only has Mah-CET been postponed, 2012 will be the last year that it will ever be held. The test is going to be shown the door in 2013.

An official from the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE), Maharashtra state government told PaGaLGuY that a decision to the effect had already been taken and hence 2012 will be the last instance ever of the Mah-CET. The official refused to go into the details explaining why such a decision had been taken. However, it can be wagered that the aggressiveness with which the AICTE has been pushing the CMAT could be the reason for Mah-CET’s scrapping.

The DTE is however not complaining about Mah-CET being scrapped. The official said that a single entrance exam was good for MBA applicants as there would be fewer exams to study for.

On Mah-CET 2012 getting postponed to CMAT, the official said, Mah-CET was postponed primarily in the interest of the students. An overlap between the two entrance exams would have caused inconvenience to MBA aspirants, so the date was rescheduled keeping them in mind.”

The official added that the DTE was expecting an increased number of aspirants to take the Mah-CET in 2012 thanks to the global economic meltdown. “In my understanding of such situations, fewer students go abroad and that means there would be a larger pool of prospective students for India’s b-schools,” he said. The turnout for Mah-CET 2011 was 92,000-odd while in 2010 it had been around 1.05 lakh.

The date for opening of applications for Mah-CET 2012 is likely to be in the early part of February while the closure of those applications would be in the middle of the same month, said the official. DTE had earlier issued a statement saying that it would announce the opening and closing dates of applications in due course of time. We were thinking on the lines of an online test earlier, but dropped the idea after the AICTE notified that the CET would be scrapped, the official informed, on being asked why they were continuing the Mah-CET in the pencil-paper format instead of upgrading to a more hi-tech system.

PaGaLGuY polled a couple of students who had been admitted through the Mah-CET route into Mumbai-based b-schools in the past to gauge their reaction about the test shutting down.

“There are approximately a hundred colleges that are affliated to the Mumbai University. There are 100-150 MBA seats per college. In the overall scheme of things, applicants targetting those colleges would receive a major setback if the Mah-CET were scrapped,” said Krunal Desai, a second-year student of Master of Management Studies (MMS) at the KJ Somaiya Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai.

“I don’t support the idea of the Mah-CET being scrapped because the alternatives don’t look very reliable to me at the moment,” said Sumit Amladi, a second-year MMS student at the LN Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research, Mumbai.