The gateway to India's premiere B-Schools will go online soon. The Indian Institute of Managements (IIMs) are already in the process to conduct the Common Aptitude Test (CAT) online from the year 2009.

According to the reports, the Human Resource Development Ministry has given approval to this very idea coming from the IIMs. Once exam goes online, the students will be able to choose the day of their online test from a set of given dates.

Under the new system, not all students will be able to take the exam on the same day as is the case now. The exam will have to be conducted in staggered batches within a window period of a few months. The other change will be that instead of the current single exam paper, the online test will have several different papers of the same level of difficulty, says a report.

The online model will be similar to US exams like the GMAT (Graduate Management Aptitude Test) and the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) except that the results will not appear instantly.

The IIMs are planning to conduct the CAT across the country at over 100 computerised exam centres.