The Common Admission Test (CAT) of the Indian Institutes of Management at Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Indore, Kozhikode, Lucknow and Shillong will be a Computer Based Test (CBT) from this year onwards and Career Launcher, an MBA test preparing institute, is gearing up for this.
It has set up computer labs at its centres, and is preparing the students on the changes they should expect in the exam. “We feel that the quantitative aptitude part of the CAT will remain the same but the comprehension passages, in the reading part, will become shorter. Also, the data interpretation section will become smaller,” said Gautam Puri, Vice-Chairman, Career Launcher.
At Career Launcher, the number of enquiries by students asking about the CBT CAT have doubled in the last few days. The test, called CBT CAT, will be conducted in a window of about 10 days sometime at the end of the calendar year.
CAT will take a CBT format comparable to the existing tests such as GMAT, GRE and TOEFL but at a substantially lower cost. “We advise students to have a look at the GMAT papers of the last few years to have a feel of the online test,” added Puri.
“We already have put up online tests on our website 'mba.careerlauncher.com' which have been built using the statistics of students who took these tests on the day they were conducted, and compare it with the test taker today in order to give a fair idea to the students as to where they stand,” said R Shiva Kumar, director academics and research and development, Career Launcher.
As far as the number of questions are concerned, Puri says that they would remain in the 75-90 range in online CAT.
