About 260,000 IIM aspirants today appeared for the Common Admission Test (CAT), which many candidates described as “tougher” and longer than that of last year’s.
The number of aspirants this time witnessed an increase of about 50,000, apparently in view of their hope of making it to the prestigious management schools as six more such institutes are coming up next year.
Marking an upward trend in the number of questions, the CAT papers had 90 questions — 40 on verbal and 25 each on quantitative aptitude and data interpretation. The number of questions were 75 each in 2006 and 2007.
“Additional questions were in the verbal section. There were more questions on vocabulary, grammar and comprehension. The questions were tougher than last year’s,” Rohit Sharma, a candidate who appeared for the test at Bharti Public School in Mayur Vihar, New Delhi, said.
The candidates included nearly 54,000 girls. About 50,000 candidates took the test in the capital alone. The test was held at 230 centres in 23 cities across the country, including 60 in the national capital region.
Those clearing the test will be eligible for admission into the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) at Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Indore, Kozhikode, Lucknow and Shillong.
Those in the merit list may have more options next year in view of six new IIMs expected to come up in 2009. Besides, they will be able to take admissions into 40 other B-schools that take students on CAT merit list. At present, there are about 1,800 seats in the seven IIMs, including the newly opened IIM at Shillong.
About 290,000 students had applied to appear in the CAT this year.
“But a total of 260,000 forms were shortlisted. Last year, about 212,000 candidates had taken the test,” IIM-Ahmedabad spokesperson Ishita Solanki said.
“The question paper was relatively tough this year. I could not attempt all the questions because their were more questions in the verbal section. The mathematics part was also a bit difficult,” Ashish, an aspirant, said.
There were higher-level vocabulary-based questions in the verbal section. But the passages for comprehension were larger than last year’s and the questions were tricky. In mathematics, there were fewer questions on arithmetic and more on higher mathematics, he added.
Each question carried four marks, taking the total marks to 360 against 300 last year. There is a provision of negative marking for wrong answers.
Experts felt the question pattern was similar to that of 1998.
“This was the first time in ten years that we have seen increased weightage to the verbal section over the other two. This section had many surprises,” Jaydeep Choudhary, a faculty member at TIME Management Institute, said.
The results of the test will be out in January next year.
The IIMs have implemented OBC quota this year onwards and have increased their seats. The number of questions, which was 90 in 2005, was reduced to 75 in 2006 and 2007. There were 123 questions in 2004 and 150 in 2003.
