1,99,600 Appear for CAT 2017, Women Candidates Up by 1.16%

The Common Admission Test 2017 (CAT 2017) held on November 26 in 381 test centres spread over 140 cities in India, saw around 1,99,600 candidates appearing for the exam.

CAT is a mandatory exam for admission to flagship post graduate management programs in the 20 Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and other top-rated B-schools. Each of the IIMs takes up the responsibility of conducting the exam on a rotational basis. This year, IIM, Lucknow was the designated Institute to conduct the test.

Nearly 87% candidates appeared for the Common Admission Test (CAT) conducted by the Indian Institute of Management Lucknow (IIM-L) on Sunday.

The cut-off in this section is expected to be higher than that in CAT 2016.

A total of 2,31,067 students had registered for CAT 2017 out of which 87% had sat for the test. The 3-hour exam, comprising three sections, each of one-hour duration, was held in two shifts. Section I was Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension, Section II, Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning and Section III Quantitative Ability.

The test results are expected to be tentatively available online in the second week of January next year. The list of candidates shortlisted for the next level of selection will be made available on the website of the respective IIMs.

The IIMs will be sending interview letters directly to the shortlisted candidates. The criteria for shortlisting vary among IIMs. Candidates will have to visit the admission hotlinks of the respective websites of IIMs for further information.

This year, the number of women candidates went up by 1.16% over the previous year’s figure. As against 231, 067 applicants, this year saw 78,009 women candidates appearing for the test. In 2016, 76,000 female candidates had sat for the test. The number of male candidates this year is 153,027, CAT 2017 Convenor Prof. Neeraj Dwivedi said.

While the number of transgender candidates increased to 31 from 22 last year, physically challenged applicants number dipped to 910 from the previous year’s 921.

The number of questions across sections remained the same as that of the previous year. Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension section had 34 questions. The Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning section had 32 questions. This section was stated to be relatively tougher than the previous years. The Quantitative Ability section had 34 questions. Overall, the test was stated to be moderately tough as in the previous year.

Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension section had 10 question in Verbal and 24 in RCs. There were three passages in RC with 6 questions each and two, with 3 questions each. The RC was relatively easy but compensated by the increased level of difficulty in the ‘choices’.

A large proportion of questions were inference-based, needing good critical reasoning skills. The options in most questions required involved reading and in some cases multiple readings.

The 10 questions on verbal ability were of moderate level of difficulty. However, with seven of these ten being non-multiple choice type questions, the level of difficulty goes up by a notch or two. The cut-off in this section is expected to be slightly lower than that in CAT 2016.

Compared to the previous year, this section was tougher. Several familiar models of questions in LR & DI were absent. While the data in some of the sets looked innocuous, to begin with, it became tougher for many a candidate. Other sets had a large volume of data and text that would prove to be time-consuming. The cut-off in this section is expected to be slightly lower than that in CAT 2016.

Quantitative ability section was stated to be the easiest. A large number of questions were on basic arithmetic concepts and those candidates who have maximised the number of attempts may score high in this section. The cut-off in this section is expected to be higher than that in CAT 2016.

Candidates were allowed the use of the basic onscreen calculator. While the time allocated for answering each section was 60 minutes, the test takers were not allowed to switch from one section to another while answering questions in a particular section.