Cat Refurbished: Boon Or Bane?

Change is obstinate. No matter how hard you try to avoid it, it would still creep into our lives. Be it negative or positive, it has that uncanny ability to shape up our lives. And that’s precisely the reason why many students are now frightened about their future, for a major change has been introduced into the CAT pattern, effective from this year onwards.
 

Common Aptitude Test, popularly known as CAT, is one of the most prominent (read difficult) entrance exams for admission into MBA colleges. The very thought of taking CAT sends a chill down people’s spine for it indeed is one of the trickiest exams in India. What has compounded the situation and left people bamboozled is the revised pattern of the exam.
 

The number of questions has increased and the time too has been ramped up to 170 minutes (from the 140 minutes). Since both- the number of questions and time has witnessed a snowball effect; the percentile too is expected to hover somewhere higher in the stratosphere. Clearly, a tougher percentile cut-off is expected to get into the Best MBA colleges in India.
 

And if you think that this is it, well, the tone of this sentence alone will tell you that it’s not. In a bid to improve the CAT 2014, it will only be conducted over a short span of two days, consisting of four sessions. The exams will be held on November 16 and November 22.  As an added advantage, students will be allowed to hop from one section to another and devote more time to the section they think they can do better in. The flexibility has enabled students to heave a sigh of relief.

 

When a whiff of change was spread in the air regarding the changes, there were some serious apprehensions. For a student who has been preparing for the exam for over many years and is giving repeated attempts just to get into any of the top colleges in Delhi, will now have to put in some pains to get accustomed to the new pattern.
 

Though many professors of the best MBA colleges in India haven’t refrained themselves from saying that the new modus operandi will tone out the difficulty level, students are still fearful. After almost a year of preparation on the old pattern the newer one will be a pain to the mind. As it turns out, November 16 and 22 will tell how things turn out to be!