Hyderabad: Students gear up to bell the CAT

Hyderabad: MBA aspirants who registered for the Common Aptitude Test 2012-13, which began on July 30, have to go through an examination paper, which is being set by Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Kozhikode for the very first time. Over 15,000 students from Andhra Pradesh appeared for the examination last year for admissions into IIM and those scheduled to take the examination between October 11 and November 6 have been speculating a change in pattern. Going by the aspirants version, the Verbal Ability is a tough nut to crack.

“There are students from technical background who are as intimidated by quantitative ability section as well. To improve on their performance in verbal ability, reading varied topics from economics, business, to philosophy helps the students to increase their comprehension. The reading speed and ability to comprehend matter most in this section,” observes course director of TIME, Ramnath S. Kanakadandi.

“The Data Interpretation section is the one I am worried about as each institute has its model of setting the paper,” says Siddharth Ramakant, a student of final year B.E who will be attempting the examination this year.

The fourth computer based test (CBT) has students worried about the possible levels of difficulty. Contrary to the perception of the aspirants, experts believe there is no set pattern to bell the CAT. “The level of comfort and preparation differs from one student to another and in a CBT the candidate can still review all questions before leaving a section, hence there is no need to panic,” says Ramnath S. Kanakadandi.

Reading diverse pieces help increase the familiarity of the candidates to the reading passage in the examination. The time for preparation varies from one student to another. Sekhar Anand who scored a 99.99 percentile from Hyderabad in CAT 2011-12 admits that his schedule involved one to two hours of preparation daily. At the end of the day it is the level of preparedness of candidates which makes a difference. Similar to last year, around 2 lakh students are likely to compete for 3000 seats in various IIMs.