hi, i beg to differ here..there's an important difference between GMAT and CAT..u can take cat as many times as u want..it is not viewed negatively..but u can't take GMAT that way.. most us schools view a repeat attempt negatively.. so what if u lost a year because of unfortunate circumstances, u cud get thru the following year or the year after that..if u consider the average age of the people getting into a us b-school(around 28 years because of the application of the workex criteria) and assuming that u start taking cat at the age of 22, u can take 6 attempts more to get into an iim rather than a us b-school:-).. am sure the unfortunate circumstances would not repeat in each of those six occasions..so i think, cat gives you more time and flexibility than GMAT.. Anup
