CHENNAI: A few hundred candidates who faced the first session of the 2011 Common Admission Test (CAT) here on Saturday were also the first to taste a completely new pattern of the online examination introduced this year, which effected many a changes compared to its previous avatars.While experts in the field of management education were of the view that the changes were mainly an attempt to take CAT on par with other such international qualification examinations, it was also the result of the IIMs learning from suggestions that poured in after the completion of the online testing last year and improving on the system.Students were of the view that the most important change was the reduction of the number of sections in the paper. While the previous editions had three sections comprising of Verbal Ability, Quantitative Ability and Analytical Reasoning and Data Interpretation, the current year’s test was divided into two where Quantitative Ability & Data Interpretation were clubbed as one, and Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning together as the other.This apart, unlike previous years when the candidates were allowed to traverse between sections during the course of the exam, the current pattern had compartmentalised them into two separate sessions where the candidate had to finish the first to go to the next. A time limit of 70 minutes was also fixed for each session.According to N Murali Manohar, member of the faculty at a popular CAT coaching centre in the city, reducing the number of sections helped students as the habit of wasting time in one particular component will wither away.“The initial reaction that we have got is that the students found it easier to fully concentrate on one area at a time and then move to the other,“ he says, adding that time management has become a bit less important. However, the lack of freedom in choosing which section they could attend first was an issue that had to be looked into as candidates would have preferences on subjects they would want to pursue first.Experts also say that fixed number of questions, and time limit, ensured that students now don’t escape by choosing the easier questions in the sections that they are weaker in and leave out the tougher ones.V Shailaja, an engineering professor who also coaches students for MBA entrance examinations, says with more time, the tougher questions may very well differentiate the best from the rest. “It is more like other international exams where you are forced to take the tougher questions as such a mechanism is built into the system. Henceforth, it would be difficult to get higher scores by smart choice of questions alone,” she says.Director of Triumphant Institute of Management Education, S Balasubramanian, says that the early announcement of the change in pattern came as a boon to the students.“The good thing about this year is that the students came to know about the changes three months earlier and were able to prepare accordingly unlike previous years when you knew the pattern only when the examinations began.”
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