CAT 2015 throws up surprises for test takers

Mumbai: The common admission test (CAT) 2015, which was held recently has threw a few surprises this year for aspirants seeking admission to the premier Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs).

Around 2.19 lakh students had registered for the test this year, which is highest in last six years. Students appeared for the exam found the section on logical reasoning (LR) and data interpretation (DI) tougher than verbal and quant. The test was conducted over two slots on Sunday.

Siddharth S, a student who got a centre at Pune said, "There were lot of surprises this year. Most questions were on reading comprehension (RC) and the remaining 10 on verbal were non-MCQs.There was nothing on grammar and vocabulary. However, the section was not tough. Only the LR section was difficult."

Prashanth Nair, regional director of a coaching institute, said that 33 out of 100 questions did not have multiple choices, which may have contributed to the difficulty level of the paper.

Hemang Panchmatia from another coaching institute said that the non-MCQs though were time consuming, tested students on their actual knowledge instead of mere guesswork.

Few students reported technical glitches

The test was conducted smoothly across centres, except for a few minor technical glitches. Few students reported power failure at a centre in Chandivali for 10 minutes which was compensated. In some cases, the server crashed and in a sporadic case, the mouse of a students stopped functioning leading to wastage of time. However, the instances of glitches were fewer in comparison to previous years.

TOI