Cat 2016: an overview of past trends

CAT 2016: AN OVERVIEW OF PAST TRENDS

The Common Admission test, the most sought after MBA entrance exam has crossed the 2 lakh mark in terms of the number of applicants this year exceeding last year by 13,000. Close to 25% of the examinees make it to the top rated B-schools and IIMs every year. It can be said that the credibility of the exam owing to the reputed institutions that it is associated with has been pulling increasing number of candidates as evident this year.

Over this period of six years, Cat exam has made a lot of changes in terms of the mode of attempting the exam as well as the pattern causing fluctuations in the number of applicants. One of the major dips in applicants was seen when it decided to go paperless in 2009. A lot of technical issues arose and eventually the exam was rescheduled for a number of aspirants. This event brought down the number of applicants significantly for a consecutive period of 4 years after which it regained momentum on the basis of reinforced trust imposed by students getting aware of the attractive career opportunities available on possession of an MBA from an institute of great repute.

The major changes in the exam pattern that made the students relieved was the introduction of an on-screen calculator and increasing the exam time by 10 mins to 180 mins in 2015. The number of questions was increased to 100 from 60 in 2014 to be completed in a span of 2 hours and 50 minutes. With a corresponding increase in time with the increase in the number of questions, the time to be taken per question reduced conveying a message across that, all along only accuracy was enough, but now a perfect balance between speed and accuracy was required making it more competitive and hyped.

In 2015, further to this, the Quantitative Ability (QA) section had 34 questions, while the Data interpretation (DI) and Logical reasoning (LR) sections combined had 32 questions with 34 remaining for Verbal Ability while in the previous year, Quantitative Ability along with Data interpretation section totaled up to 50 sections with the other 50 appearing from the combination of the latter ones.

Whatever be the changes, the approach of the competitive exam is to be taken into account by the students attempting the exam. The fluctuations in the count of the questions do not affect the relevance or importance of any one in particular. The pattern has already included fill in the blanks in addition to the MCQ to avoid sheer guesswork and forced attempts intended at arriving at an answer among the choices. More amount of questions reducing the time per question is directed at making the paper a little easier. Last but not the least, in spite of online calculators, candidates are advised to manually solve problems to save time and for the fact that not many B-schools permit the use of calculators moving forward.

Overall, the aim of having a look at the past trends helps understand the perspective of the exam and the type of candidates that it is looking for. By understanding their relevance and preparing the right way, one would surely be among the percentage of the candidates knocking on the gates of reputed B-schools.

Chandrakala, a content writer based in Collegesearch, a leading education portal that has been setup with an aim of simplifying the information the students need to decide on which college to study.