Official CAT, IIM, XAT, SNAP, NMAT and CMAT Links: Annotated and Checked Weekly

The pages that matter, in the order you need them

Between now and your first interview you need about a dozen official pages, and you need them in a sequence: the CAT portal and its advertisement until the result in early January 2027, then each IIM's admission policy and shortlist page, then, if you also wrote XAT or SNAP, the XLRI and Symbiosis pages. Below is the full set, annotated, with what we could verify on 21 October 2026 and what we could not. "Verified" means the page answered our fetch and the content matched what we quote. "Unverified" means it was blocked, empty or missing on both 20 and 21 October; the pages exist and are official, we simply could not read them this week, and we say so rather than copy a figure from a coaching site. Every date here agrees with the dates block at the top of this page, which is rendered from our calendar.

CAT 2026: iimcat.ac.in and the advertisement PDF

iimcat.ac.in is the only site that matters for the exam itself. It is run by the convening IIM for the cycle and it is a JavaScript application: when our fetcher asked for it on 20 and 21 October 2026 it answered with a 200 and a page whose only readable text was the heading "CAT 2026". That is why nothing on our pages is quoted from the portal's text; what we quote is the CAT 2026 newspaper advertisement, an image PDF hosted by IIM Calcutta that we rendered and read on 20 October 2026. The advertisement is the document the IIMs published, and it also says that the information on the CAT website is final, so when the two disagree the portal wins and we fix the page.

What the portal holds that the PDF does not: your admit card, your test city and session, and the notices that appear in the last fortnight (reporting time, permitted items, any city change). Log in once the admit card window opens on 4 November, check the city and the spelling of your name, and keep a printed copy with the photo ID you registered with. In past cycles the same portal has carried the answer key and objection window after the test, then the scorecard; our CAT 2026 dates page walks through that sequence and what to do in the weeks before the first shortlist.

IIM admission policies: where the weights live

Each IIM publishes its own admission policy for the batch, usually as a PDF under its MBA or PGP admissions page, and the weights given to the CAT score, the written test, the interview, academics, work experience and diversity differ by campus and by year. There is no central document. The only policy we have read in full this week is IIM Calcutta's, so it is the only one we quote.

IIM Calcutta, MBA 2027-29 (verified 20 and 21 October 2026)

The admission procedure for domestic candidates sets out three stages. Stage I is a set of CAT 2026 percentile cutoffs by section and overall; for the Open category they are VARC 80, DILR 80, QA 75 and overall 85, with lower cutoffs for EWS, NC-OBC, SC, ST and PwD candidates. Stage II builds a shortlist composite out of 85 points: CAT 2026 score 56, class 10 marks 10, class 12 marks 15, gender diversity 4. Stage III, final selection, is out of 100: CAT 2026 score 30, personal interview 48, writing ability test 8, academic diversity 6, work experience 8. The page gives the weights and the cutoffs; it does not publish a rubric for the interview or the WAT. Our selection criteria page works through what a swing of a few PI points does to a candidate's final composite.

IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Lucknow and the rest (unverified this week)

The IIM Ahmedabad PGP page returned 404 at every address we tried on 20 and 21 October 2026. The IIM Bangalore admission process page returned 403 to one fetcher and a dropped connection or a 404 to the other, both days. IIM Lucknow's PGP admission page closed the connection on 21 October. We therefore quote no weights for those campuses, and we would ask you to treat any IIMA, IIMB or IIML weight table you see on a coaching site as reporting until you have opened the institute's own PDF. The policy PDFs are not hidden: open the institute's admissions page in a browser, find the document whose title contains "2027-29", and read the final selection table yourself. IIM Calcutta calls its written round the Writing Ability Test (WAT); IIM Ahmedabad's is widely reported as the Analytical Writing Test (AWT), so check the name in its own PDF. The policy is short, and it is the most important document in your interview preparation.

XAT 2027 and XLRI

xatonline.in is XLRI's test portal and answered our fetch on 21 October 2026. Its Important Timelines block gives registration from 15 July 2026 to 6 December 2026, an application edit window on 16 and 17 October 2026, the admit card from 20 December 2026 (tentative), and the last official mock tests on 31 October and 1 November 2026 for candidates registered by 28 October. The registration page gives the fee as Rs 2,300, with Rs 200 more for each XLRI programme, and repeats the 6 December close. The home page also says the paper has 95 questions expected with one mark each, and that incorrect answers lose 0.25 marks. Our 20 October read recorded an XLRI results notice dated 25 April 2027; on 21 October that notice was commented out of the page source and no longer shown, so we quote no XLRI final results date.

One thing you should know before you plan travel. The exam date is Sunday 3 January 2027, 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm: in our afternoon re-read on 21 October 2026 the home page's Important Timelines block, the registration page and the FAQ ("Sunday, January 03, 2027, from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM") all gave that date and no other. Earlier the same day, and in our research read of 20 October, the site's scrolling header strip had said "XAT Exam Date: January 5, 2027 | Exam Timings: 2 PM to 5:30 PM", next to last year's registration close (10 December 2025) and admit card line, which is why some pages elsewhere still print 5 January. If you see that strip, it is the stale element; the Important Timelines block and the FAQ are the ones XLRI keeps current. Open xatonline.in once more before you book anything. Two other FAQ lines matter for planning: the test lasts three hours with no sectional time limits, and results come "approximately three weeks after the exam", which points to late January 2027 for the XAT result. The home page also notes a penalty of 0.1 marks for each question skipped after the eighth, on top of the 0.25 for a wrong answer.

The XLRI admission procedure overview is where XLRI explains how it uses the XAT score and how its interview rounds run. The page answered our fetch on 21 October but returned only its footer (contact details and social links), so we have not read its content this week and quote nothing from it. Our XAT, SNAP, NMAT and CMAT page carries what the rounds look like, labelled as reported where it is not from an official page, and the GD topics page covers the group round that XLRI and several Symbiosis institutes still run.

SNAP 2026, NMAT and CMAT

SNAP 2026 (verified 21 October 2026)

snaptest.org, Symbiosis International's test portal, is the clearest of the four. Per the page on 21 October 2026: tests on Sunday 13 December, Saturday 19 December and Saturday 26 December 2026; a test fee of Rs 2,550 per attempt and a programme registration fee of Rs 1,000 per programme, government taxes extra, both mandatory and non-refundable; up to three tests, with the higher score used for the percentile and no normalisation; eligibility of a graduate degree with 50 per cent marks (45 per cent for SC and ST candidates); and the score valid for the 2027-28 academic session. On the rounds, the page says shortlisted candidates "must attend the Group Exercise and Personal Interaction process conducted separately by each institute", so the GE-PI dates and format come from each Symbiosis institute, not from the portal.

NMAT by GMAC (unverified)

mba.com/exams/nmat is the official NMAT page and it is script-rendered: our fetcher received no readable text on 20 or 21 October 2026. We do not take NMAT windows, fees or retake rules from coaching sites, so this site quotes none. Open the page in a browser for the current test window, the fee in rupees and the retake rule, and note that NMIMS and the other schools that accept NMAT run their own interview rounds under their own names.

CMAT (verified 21 October 2026; 2027 not yet announced)

cmat.nta.nic.in is the National Testing Agency's CMAT site. On 21 October 2026 it showed the 2026 cycle complete: provisional answer keys and recorded responses on 31 January 2026, final answer keys and the NTA scores on 17 February 2026, and a site last-updated date of 10 October 2026. No CMAT 2027 notice or information bulletin was up. When the 2027 bulletin appears it will be linked from that page, and it is the only place to take the dates and fee from. Our weekly check watches it.

What is not official, and how to tell

The MBA entrance space has a great deal of coaching content, and much of it is good for pattern and experience. None of it is a source for a date, a fee, a cutoff or a weight. Three tests, in order.

1. The domain. Official pages live on iimcat.ac.in, each IIM's ac.in domain, xatonline.in and xlri.ac.in, snaptest.org and siu.edu.in, mba.com for NMAT, and cmat.nta.nic.in. A site whose address ends in anything else is reporting, however many times it says "official".
2. The document behind the number. An official number has a PDF or a page behind it that you can open: the CAT advertisement, the IIM Calcutta procedure page, the SNAP fee lines. If a page gives you an IIM Ahmedabad weight table with no link to the IIMA PDF, it is a copy of a copy, and the policy changes every year.
3. The date on the page. Policies say "2027-29". Advertisements say "CAT 2026". Anything describing "2026-28" or "CAT 2025" is last cycle, including, on our 20 October read, xatonline.in's own header strip, which still carried a 2025 registration close next to a 5 January exam date while the timelines block said 3 January.

We hold ourselves to the same test. Every figure on this site's MBA pages names its document; where we could not read the document this week, we say so in the text and the link is marked unverified, as the IIMA, IIMB, XLRI and NMAT entries above are. Experience posts, question banks and interview transcripts on our pages are labelled as written by TalkDrill or as reported; they are preparation material, not sources.

Our weekly check, and how to do your own

Once a week we re-fetch every page in the table above, compare the figures with what our pages say, and update the dates block and this page on the same day; the change appears in the changelog on the MBA interview hub. The 21 October 2026 run produced four changes to our notes: the XAT 2027 date settled at Sunday 3 January 2027 after the stale 5 January strip recorded above, IIM Lucknow added to the list of institutes whose page we could not read, the CMAT site's last-updated date moved to 10 October 2026 with no 2027 notice, and IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Bangalore confirmed unreadable on a second attempt the same afternoon (404 for IIM Ahmedabad; 403 or 404 for IIM Bangalore).

Your own check takes ten minutes a week and matters most at four moments. 4 November 2026: the CAT admit card window opens; download it and read the session. The week after 29 November: the answer key and the objection window on iimcat.ac.in. The first week of January 2027: the result, then each IIM's shortlist on its own site, with the WAT-PI schedule in the shortlist mail in past cycles (the rounds run 1 February to 31 March 2027 in our calendar, marked expected, because each IIM sets its own dates). Early December: XAT registration closes on 6 December and SNAP's first test is on 13 December, so anyone still deciding on a second exam has about six weeks from today; XAT itself is on Sunday 3 January 2027, five weeks after CAT. Everything else, the six-week roadmap covers week by week, and the exam dates calendar carries every dated row on one page.

Last checked 21 October 2026. If an official page above has changed and ours has not, write to us and we will correct the page once we have checked the source.