topCATcoaching Faculty's Take On CAT 2009

The online CAT has made its debut and its possibly been the roughest debut since Shane Warne was manhandled by the Indians at Sydney. One just hopes that like Warne, the Online version of the CAT will also be one day be hailed as a genial move and a landmark move.

Getting down to the thing at hand, we will now look at some of the initial reactions that CAT has drawn from the aspirants. Because of the non disclosure agreement we will not be able to delve into the technical aspects of the examination but then there are a lot of lessons to be learnt otherwise from the many students who have already given their examination.

We will begin with a few must knows for students who are yet to take the test. First we will take a look at the positives which have been conveyed by the aspirants so far. The review system is working fine in the sense that it allows you to shift to any question that you want to. And as they had already conveyed, you can underline/highlight the necessary parts in the case of reading comprehensions, which makes it a lot easier for the candidates. One more thing which could possibly aid students this year is the fact that in the case of reading comprehension or data interpretation where there are a set of questions based on the same paragraph/data set, then all the related questions are visible on the same page.

Now we will take a look at a few neutral issues. The marks for individual questions are not being displayed. So while one may safely assume that the marks for all the questions will be same, this may be a matter of concern. On a similar note, from the feedback received so far, no mention of negative marking has been made in the tutorial or the test instructions. So, while this may leave people in doubt as to whether negative marking is there or not, one would possibly think that in case that CAT has undergone such a fundamental change a notice should have come along. The final call on this will come down to individual students.

Now we turn our attention to some of the problems which students have faced in the examination hall. While we hope that none of this gets repeated the candidates are requested to be mentally prepared for some of these issues. There have been a lot of cases where computers have automatically shut down and restarted. While no time has been lost in terms of the examination time, sometimes the reloading of the test has taken a lot of time. Also, be very careful about clicking any of the buttons which are present which have quit/end written on them. The end review button is causing a lot of confusion with a couple of inputs stating that clicking on it seems to end the whole CAT. Similarly at the start, when the tutorial appears there are two buttons, one which will exit the tutorial and the other which will exit the entire test. So, be extra careful on what you click. In fact its been said at a centre, the invigilators haven’t let candidates go through the tutorial because they do not want anyone to click on the wrong button at that point of time.

Coming to the test as such, there are a few vital findings reported by students. There seems to have been cases where questions have been repeated from previous CAT papers. How this could even be possible is impossible to see, but then it should not hurt the students who are going to appear for the exam to take a look at the previous papers. The overall standard of the paper has been in general found to be easier than previous years and this should possibly calm the nerves of the students given that there seems to be a lot of other factors in play right now.

One final word to the students. Remain calm and take it as it comes. This year will possibly prove to be the most difficult for CAT aspirants not because of the examination in itself but all the other factors at play. To finish this article with a cliché, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.