CATThe Common Admission Test (CAT) is conducted by the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) and is the first step in the process of seeking admission to the IIMs. The CAT is considered as one of the most important national standard for entrance to management institutes. Apart from the Indian Institutes of Management over 40 other Management Institutes use the CAT for short listing candidates.
The Common Admission Test (CAT) is an all-India test conducted by the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) as an entrance test for the management programmes of its six business schools.
150,000 students compete for less than 1200 general seats in the IIM's which makes it even more selective than all the Ivy League Universities put together. Even with a top 1% score, a candidate must also win through the equally stringent group and individual interviews.
The IIMs CAT is almost certainly the world's most demanding entrance examination for any graduate institute. The test taker is expected to excel in arithmetical problem solving, geometry, statistics, data interpretation, logical reasoning in solving complex puzzles, and English language skills. The test is held on the third Sunday of November for a duration of two hours (2.5 hours from 2006).
It is neither expected, nor possible, that all the questions be answered, so the CAT also tests the candidates' ability to prioritise under pressure: a quality necessary in the competitive environment of IIMs' courses.Undoubtedly, the mother of all examinations, the CAT has the widest coverage in Quantitative, Verbal and Reasoning areas of testing.
The CAT exam is of 2 hours and generally had four sections till 1998. The format of the CAT paper changed in1999. It had only 3 sections with equal number of questions in each section. There is negative marking for wrong answers. Proficiency in all the sections is essential for getting a call from any of the IIMs.
The CAT is now conducted on the second last Sunday of November and is generally the first management entrance examination of the examinations that last upto June the next year.
Pattern of the test paper
CAT (as it is most commonly known across India) has evolved from a speed based simple test into a test which demands more proficiency in concepts and fundamentals rather than just speed. Earlier CATs used to have 180 questions to be solved in 2 hours. The cutoff (minimum marks needed to get an interview call from the IIM) for such a paper was generally 20 each in the three sections (Mathematics + English + Data interpretation and Logic).
For the years 2001, 2002 and 2003 the paper consisted of 50 * 3 = 150 questions. The cutoffs being 15 marks for individual sections and approximately 55 for whole paper.
The first biggest surprise for the CAT takers was in 2004, when the IIMs introduced the concept of differential marking for the first time. The paper had just 123 questions with the following distribution: (the decimal numbers are marks allocated to each question)
* Mathematics - Total: 50 (10 * 0.5 + 5*2.0 + 35 * 1.0) Cutoff - approx 12
* English - Total: 35 (15*2.0 + 20*1.0) Cutoff - approx 12
* DI and LR - Total: 38 (12*2.0 +26*1.0) Cutoff - approx 17
Overall 123 Questions : 10 of Half marks + 32 of 2 marks and 81 of 1 mark each. The overall cutoff for the paper was nearly 51-52 marks.
CAT 2005 was even bigger surprise. There were just 90 questions - 30 in each section. Each section was further divided into two subsections:
* Math
* Section 1A - 10 Questions of 1 mark each
* Section 1B - 20 Questions of 2 mark each
* The final Cutoff for this section was nearly 11
* English
* Section 2A - 10 Questions of 1 mark each
* Section 2B - 20 Questions of 2 mark each
* The final Cutoff for this section was nearly 15
* DI and LR
* Section 3A - 10 Questions of 1 mark each
* Section 3B - 20 Questions of 2 mark each
* The final Cutoff for this section was nearly 10
* Overall this paper was the toughest in the history of CAT.
CAT 2006, which will be conducted on November 19, is scheduled to be a 2.5-hour exam instead of the traditional 2-hour exam as it was until now. Purportedly, this change has been done by the CAT exam committee to throw in an element of uncertainty in order to reduce the predictability of the exam, and thereby diminish the influence of the ubiquitous educational institutes that run immensely profitable businesses coaching students for the CAT.
CAT Bulletin 2006CAT 2005 Paper
