and Mehak Batra
The Common Admission Test or CAT as it is popularly known, one of the most competitive exams in India, is just around the corner. Being touted as one of the toughest exams to conquer, primarily due to the sheer number of students appearing for it, students all over the country are burning the midnight oil. The basic eligibility criterion for the CAT has been carried forward from previous years. The eligibility criterion includes graduation with minimum 50% marks. However, there have been major changes in the way it is to be conducted. It will now be a 10 day affair starting from the 28th of November and will go on till the 7th of December. It will be a computer based test (CBT). Instead of reading the questions in a paper booklet and darkening the ovals on the answer-sheet, a candidate will read the questions on a computer terminal and choose an answer by clicking on an option. It will be held over a span of 2 hours and 30 minutes. A candidate will have to encounter 60-70 questions testing verbal and quantitative ability as well as data interpretation.
The competition among the candidates has become cut throat. Only the best of the best performers in the CAT get calls from the prestigious IIMs, which are every aspiring management student’s dream. And the contest keeps getting tougher by the year. According to the data available, only the candidates scoring above 99 percentile and clearing sectional cut-offs, that is, who score better than 99 percent of the students giving the exam, are the ones who generally get into IIM’s. Last year 99.89 percentile was the overall cut- off score at IIM-Ahmadabad, whereas the same for IIM-Calcutta was 99.32 percentile. So, let’s see who bells the CAT this year.