CAT: Common Admission Test At A Glance
CAT Examination or Common Admission Test is carried out each year by Indian Institute of Managements (IIMs). Common Admission Test ascertains candidate's presence of mind and mental ability to perform during pressure. Success in CAT examination depends majorly upon two important parameters.
• Reducing the number of negatives and managing a strike rate of 85%
• Intelligently choosing questions to answer by picking those, which one is sure about the answers and avoiding the rest .
CAT entrance examination is conducted as criteria to shortlist aspirants who are looking for admission to the six IIMs including
• IIM Ahmedabad
• IIM Bangalore
• IIM Calcutta
• IIM Lucknow
• IIM Indore
• IIM Kozhikode
Apart from the IIMs some of the top management institutes such as Management Development Institute, S.P Jain Institute, Nirma Institute of Management, T.A. PAI and IMT also offer admission to applicants appeared for CAT.
The duration of the examination is of 120 minutes and the number of questions asked in common admission test varies each year. Therefore, a usual CAT examination has questions varying between 75 and 150 . This is an objective based examination and so the aspirant has to choose the best answer for each of the question which is marked at the OMR sheet. Every correct answer is awarded with one mark and every wrong answer faces a deduction of 1/4th of a mark. Differential marks are offered to the questions and therefore questions may be 0.5 mark, 1 mark or 2 marks.
CAT exam is conducted once a year in November/December and those who have graduated with minimum 50% aggregate marks are eligible to sit for it. Additionally those appearing in the final examination of graduation are also eligible for appearing in CAT.
Exam Pattern
Although the exam pattern of CAT is not consistent, usually 75 to 100 numbers of questions are asked in a CAT examination. The marks may also vary from 0.5 mark, 1 mark or 2 marks on a correct answer as well as deduction of 1/4 or 1/3 can be expected on a wrong answer. CAT Examination is conducted to test the ability of the aspirant in following areas which are
• Verbal Ability
• Reading Comprehension
• Problem Solving
• Data Interpretation
• Logical Reasoning
• Data Sufficiency
• Maths Problems
The pattern of this test has often been changed in the past.
2005 exam pattern consisted of:
• Three sections of data interpretation / reasoning, quantitative analysis, and reading, comprehension/verbal ability.
• Duration- 2 hours
• Total number of questions- 90
• Negative marking- 1/3 of mark allotted for a single correct answer
• Total number of questions in DI/Reasoning- 30
• Total number of questions in Qualitative analysis- 30
• Total number of questions in Reading Comprehension/Verbal ability- 30
All three sections carried 50 marks each.
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