The testing pattern for Common Admission Test (CAT) has been changed again. Normally the competitive exam was conducted over a week’s duration, last year this pattern was changed and the exam was conducted over two days in four sessions. This year, the test will be held only on one day, with two sessions.
This decision has been taken by the convenor of CAT 2015, IIM Ahmedabad. The number of exam centres has also been increased from 99 to 115. The authorities have informed that the female candidates will be allotted exam centres closer to their city of residence.
This new pattern has been approved by the CAT group meeting, and the reason for such change has been cited as the improvement of operational efficiency and quality of the exam content. The one day exam will aid transparency in scoring and normalisation of marks, i.e. awarding scores on the basis of difficulty level of the test.
With the difficulty level and paper pattern being the same, the normalisation of marks will not be a complicated process. In 2013, the students alleged discrepancies with regard to their marks, percentile and the normalisation process. One of the major causes was that the exam was conducted over 40 sessions and the marks for each session were normalised according to that particular session’s difficulty level.
Over two lakh students appear for CAT every year. It is conducted for admissions to management programmes in Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and other top management institutes across the country.
[“source-indiatoday.intoday”]
