One Week into CAT 2011: What do you have to say?

It has been one week into CAT 2011. Conducted online by IIMs in collaboration with Prometric, CAT aspirants faced no technical glitches this year. Everything has gone perfectly smooth so far. Commenced on October 22, the test window will remain open till November 18. CAT 2011 Results will be declared on January 11, 2011.

Apart from IIMs, more than 130 B-schools are accepting CAT scores this year including Mudra Institute of Communications (MICA), Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM), IITs and Delhi School of Economics (DSE).

CAT 2011 is being conducted in two sessions. The morning session starts at 10 AM while the afternoon session starts at 3:15 PM.

CAT aspirants receive a 15-minute tutorial before the exams to familiarize them about the procedure of the test. The tutorial has proved extremely useful to many of the students who did not get a chance to practice mock tests online due to a number of reasons. A timer keeps ticking on the top right corner of the screen to keep students aware of the time they have already spent on the tutorial and each section of the test.

As declared by the authorities earlier, CAT 2011 pattern has changed. Now, there are only two sections instead of three and each section has 30 questions that have to be solved in one hour and 10 minutes. The first section tests the aspirants' quantitative ability and data interpretation qualities; and the second section tests the aspirants' verbal ability and logical reasoning.

Most students who took the test found it very satisfying. "There were no surprises in the CAT paper this year. It looked fairly balanced and well constructed to me", said 24-year old Tiya who appeared for CAT for the first time this year.

Samriddhi, another CAT aspirant, pointed out, "Until now, IIMs have been dominated by engineers and males. With introduction of more IIMs and change in the CAT pattern this year, chances for girls as well as non-science students to make it to IIMs have improved greatly."

Mr. Rajesh Kumar, faculty of a management coaching institute, commented, "It has been one week into CAT 2011. According to the experiences of my students, CAT 2011 test is a pretty standard one and is not difficult at all. It is mandatory for students to complete first section first and then do the second section. It would have been better if things were more flexible. Data interpretation was slightly more time-consuming with a lot of calculations to do."

Vaidyan, who is giving CAT for the second time this year, however had different views. He said, "This year, we have more time to solve each question but difficulty level of questions has also been raised slightly than last year."

Keep visiting this page for some interesting updates on CAT 2011 as it unfolds itself.

Source: Ruchi Shrimali (Shiksha Team)