IIM's CAT Cut off - What is this Cutoff all about?

Usually, there are lots of rumours, guessing and anxiety that precedes and follo ws CAT about what is going to be the cut off. What do you make out of this and h ow is it likely to affect you in the run up to your CAT preparation? Thursday, January 13, 2011 CAT 2011 - Thoughts based on CAT 2010 CAT 2010 results were released a few days ago, and it is time to think about wha t we have learn from the results. I have categorized my thoughts into two catego ries. Opinions that have been reinforced 1. CAT is not an impossibly tough exam. A number of diligent non-genius candidat es have done really well. (All the evidence I am going to refer to is anecdotal and not based on any survey.). Thorough preparation, lots of practice and good p lanning should be enough to get candidates close enough. The final ingredient is perhaps a little bit of luck, but we cannot budget for that. The previous post on Self-belief holds good even now. 2. CAT rewards preparation from first principles: Quant, DI and verbal have all become more application-intensive and CAT 2010 has continued on with that trend. There is a higher bias towards non-formulaic questions. In maths and verbal, in tuition and deeper-understanding is getting rewarded vis-a vis blind formulaic l earning. As my boss never tires of saying - Intuition can be built with practice . 3. Balanced preparation is a must: With competition this high, one cannot afford to say my strength in quant should take me through. A few of our students learn t that lesson this time around New pointers that CAT 2010 has shown us 1. Quant level across the country is pretty high: 15 years ago, \a student neede d to just now a bunch of formulae, and need not have been conceptually sound. 68 years ago, when CAT made a shift towards more application-intensive questions, it was sufficient if one was conceptually sound. And you could get away without much practice. You always had time to derive 1-2 formulae, do trial-and-error a nd build hypotheses, verify with bunch of examples, etc. Now, the luxury to do a ll that is disappearing. A student almost needs to pick the right method to solv e a question straightaway. No time for any trial-and-error business. One needs t o have basics sound and practice gazillions of questions. The more different kin d of problems you can lay your hands on the better. 2. To crack DI, one needs to be good at DI and LR: One out of two wont go. There are some tough DI passages and tough LR questions that you are better of leavin g. The option of "I will kill DI and leave all LR questions" will not work Those of you who are preparing for CAT 2011 and beyond, best wishes. Posted by Bee at 5:39 PM 2 comments Labels: CAT 2010, CAT 2011, CAT exam Belief in Self - That is ALL the difference At the risk of imitating Mr. P. Chidambaram, I am going to seek the help of a ta mil verse from the book Thirukkural, written by the poet Thiruvalluvar ======= Vellathanaya Neermattam Maandhar tham Ulla thana duyarvu

The meaning of this "kural" is - if you have seen a lotus, it will go up when th e water rises in the tank and go down when the water level fell. Like that, the rise or fall of a human is based on his behavior and thoughts. ======= Many an youngster is daunted by the fact that the CAT is written by 200,000+ stu dents every year. Out of these, only 2,000 students make it to one IIM or the ot her. Only 15,000 students make it to a Tier - 1 b-school. The youngster convenie ntly concludes "I do not have a halo behind my head. I do not belong to those 2, 000 students. Heck, I doubt if i even belong to those 15,000 students". Think about it for a moment. Did those 17,000 (2,000 + 15,000) students make it to those b-schools because of a halo behind their heads? Were they differently b uilt? Did they study in schools that the other 180,000 youngsters did not go to? Were the opportunities available to them as kids vastly different from the ones available to the other 180,000? Definitely not. I think the ONLY difference was that the 17,000 students believed in themselves and believed in their ability to work hard while it was not the case with the ot her 180,000. Rather than write pages and pages of gyan, let us look at an real l ife example. Year 2001: Our protagonist, X, is in his final year of college. As is the tradit ion amongst his batchmates, he also decides to write CAT. He does not prepare fo r it. Performs poorly. Arrives at the convenient conclusion that he is not 'CAT material' (whatever that means) Year 2005: All along, X had not even given CAT a second thought - even though he always wanted to do an MBA. His colleague at the same office, Y, mentions that he had taken the cat in 2004 and is attending interviews at the IIMs for his adm ission. That is when it dawns on X how without even trying to figure at he had been preparing for a t. That is when it occurs to X self and anybody would be able naive he out what year for that ALL to crack had been. He had let go 4 valuable years it takes to crack the CAT. Y mentions th his CAT and it was not all THAT difficul it takes is preparation and a belief in the CAT.

X starts preparing for the CAT exam in the same year. Keeps at it. Does not let go of his target. Cracks the CAT and goes on to study at an IIM in the city whos e name starts with an A. To this day, X is thankful to Y for having changed his mindset; for having opene d his mind to the untapped opportunities; for helping him realize his dreams. This is the real life story of one of our students. Last we heard about this guy , he helps CAT aspirants reach their goal. There is an X in each of the 180,000 students b-school of their choice. The X in this story re you one of those 180,000 X's? Do you still to your friend for you to start believing in who did not make it to a tier - 1 was lucky to have bumped into Y. A have to wait for the CAT to happen yourself?

Our firm belief: It is not a matter of ability. It is a matter of self belief. All the best ! God Speed ! ================================================= With CAT results just gone by, and many students mulling over CAT 2011, I think

this is an excellent time to read an article like this. The article is by none other than X, who currently runs 2iim Mumbai. Posted by Bee at 5:33 PM 1 comments Labels: 2iim, 2iim Mumbai, CAT, Self belief Thursday, December 09, 2010 Admissions into IIMs - How important is work experience in getting an admit? There are many versions of this key question. How do the IIMs rate work experien ce? How much does it count for? All other things being equal, will the IIMs alwa ys prefer experienced grads? How much more should fresh graduates score in order to stand a chance? Like many of the research reports, let me start with a disclaimer. I do not clai m to have any inside knowledge on how the IIMs process applicants, and most of w hat I have to say is based on anecdotal evidence. There is no objective normalization process for accounting for experience The IIMs most likely do not have a scoring system for awarding points for work e xperience. It is my belief that the selection committee goes in with an idea of how they want the batch to be structured and conducts interviews with this backd rop. As in, IIM Bangalore might say tell the selection panel, we would like to have a round 60-80 fresh grads, 60-80 grads with 1-2 years experience and around 50-60 grads with more experience than that. Based on this, we have called 300 freshers , 300 1-2 years' experienced grads and 200 very experienced candidates for the i nterview. So, after this kind of plan is made, effectively, the groups are more or less co mpeting within each other, and therefore there is no way someone can make a stat ement like "if you have 4 years experience, you can get in with a score that is 1 percentile point lower than someone with 0 years experience". It is quiet like ly that the mean and median score of shortlisted fresh graduates is higher than that of heavily experienced candidates, and this is what we mean by saying that experience counts for something. Does 1-2 years experience count for much? Not really. The guys with less than 24 months of experience constitute a high pr oportion of any batch, and any experience less than 24 months rarely counts for much. These candidates are unlikely to have picked up any great understanding of either their industry or organizational dynamics to make a huge impact. Does the type of experience count? All B-schools price diversity (some more so than others), so a different profile always counts for something. A lawyer/ doctor always has an edge over a softwar e professional in our country. There is little doubt about this. Will the IIMs shift towards more experienced candidates With a shift to round-the-year exam to be conducted by an external agency, the I IMs will inevitably begin to value profile and experience more. So, this trend i s likely to happen Will the IIMs shun fresh graduates? Extremely unlikely. No matter which position an institute holds, it will be keen on attracting the best talent available. So, if one IIM shifts towards picking

only experienced candidates, then it will effectively lose out on fresh talent. As a talent pool, the fresh graduates compete favourably against other groups. A mong the top 10 of any graduating class, one would usually find more than 70% of candidates with 0-2 years experience, with perhaps up o 40% being fresh graduat es. There is limited statistical evidence to suggest that fresh graduates do not get value from an MBA. A large number of companies prefer to recruit fresh grad s for internships and prefer to select fresh grads for entry-level positions. So , any one IIM, if it chooses to change its profile will end up losing out on tal ent. So, unless there is a concerted effort from the top 20 B-schools in India, the dynamics cannot change overnight. I think India will slowly shift towards taking in more experienced candidates in to their B-Schools. But this shift will be slow and more or less synchronised ac ross institutes. Will personal interview and GD be more difficult for fresh graduates? The short answer is Yes. Fresh graduates have less to talk about themselves, les s personal experiences to count on and refer to, will likely have had few opport unities to make presentations to anyone and are generally a little raw. Experien ced candidates are naturally better-equipped to handle one-on-one sessions and g roup discussions. This is why fresh graduates should spend more time preparing t hemselves for GD-PI and should focus on presenting their case well. Bottom-line If you are a fresh graduate, do not let this talk of experienced candidates stan ding a huge advantage get to you. You are effectively competing against fellow f resh grads for the seats and in any case, you have likely done better than an av erage experienced candidate in the CAT exam and that should count for something. If you have 1-2 years of experience, this is not a game-changer, so make sure yo u have enough talking points about your job. Posted by Bee at 11:01 PM 0 comments Labels: CAT GD PI, CAT selection, CAT shortlisting, IIM selection process Tuesday, November 30, 2010 CAT can now be taken through the year - What does this mean? Now, it is more or less official. The CAT exam is set to be conducted through th e year. If not from 2011, this is set to happen from 2012 onwards. This is a sig nificant shift from the CAT, and coming close on the heels of the shift to compu ter-based exam, this changes the CAT market substantially. Why have the IIMs done it? The IIMs have tried to make three transitions over the past 3-4 years - paper-ba sed to computer-based, once a year to round the year and to try and create a sep arate entity to run the exam. All three suggest that the IIMs want to make this a broader standardized test, rather than being purely viewed as an entrance exam for the IIMs. Historically, more than 100 universities have used the CAT, but m any among these have used multiple exams (CAT, GMAT, GRE, JMET, etc) for selecti ng students. The IIMs are eying a larger share of this market and want to remove the timing c onstraint in taking the CAT exam. Last year, 2 lakhs students took the CAT. If i t is made a round-the-year exam, that number could easily go up another 30-40%. Add to this the fact that there would be many students that would be attempting the CAT more than once a year, this is great news for CAT. A large number of pro fessionals find it difficult to plan for the CAT. Now, with more freedom to choo se the dates, a large number of these will start writing the exam.

How are things different for test-takers? Freedom to select dates on which you can take is always a boon. One can account for everything from foreign assignments, exam schedules and superstitions when s electing the correct dates. But, in every competitive exam, any change is likely to be a zero sum game. This change, I believe will be a disadvantage to fresher s and a boon to experienced candidates. Experienced candidates are usually the ones that struggle to plan well in advanc e, struggle to set aside 10-11 months to prepare for the exam, and generally end up not putting in enough preparation for the CAT. Now, anyone shifting jobs wil l want to take a 6-week break, prepare for CAT and take it at the earliest (some what similar to the GMAT). More importantly, the CAT scores will get de-emphasiz ed even more and profile, experience will matter more. Scoring 99.94th percentile in a once-a-year CAT might more or less guarantee a s eat in one of the top 10 univs, but scoring a corresponding score in a round-the -year CAT will be less of an achievement. This de facto implies that profile, ex perience, academic background, etc matter more. Indian schools might become simi lar to the global ones in that, they will start with a CAT cut-off and then shor tlist based on profile, rather than shortlist based on CAT scores. This will be disadvantageous for fresh graduates. This will also be disadvantageous for candi dates with a standard profile (such as an Engineer with 3 years of experience in Patni/Polaris). More experienced grads will prepare for this, more of them will prepare better, and for many of them the experience will count for more. So, freshers might not be the happiest bunch due to this change. Having said that, India is probably th e only country that allows so many freshers to do an MBA. Globally, students wit h zero experience doing an MBA is the exception rather than the norm. So, this s hift towards selecting more experienced candidates was also always coming, I gue ss. How does this change the preparation pattern? The content does not change at all. One needs to prepare for the same quant, DI and verbal. But, a 12-week intense routine will probably be the preferred route, rather than a 15 month course of low intensity. Till 2000, students used to pre pare for less than 4-5 months for the CAT. Only after these coaching institutes realized that getting college students early is very lucrative, did the cycle of preparation slowly expand to 15 months. This is probably an overkill. Students will start opting for the short burst rather than the low-intensity momentum-kil ling build up. More experienced candidates will want to prepare over a 12-week c ycle, more diverse candidates will want to give it a crack. Fresh grads will pro bably still prefer the 12-month routine, mostly because this will ensure the gro und work is done if ever they want to take the CAT 2-3 years down the line. Hope fully, some newer players will emerge in the test-preparation space :) All in all, this is good news, one can plan for CAT better, the IIMs are set to make more money, and quality of paper should improve further. Who knows, the CAT might begin competing with the GMAT outside the Indian market as well. I am amo ng few people who believe that the quality of the CAT exam is excellent (barring the few errors). If they manage to cut the error-rate, we could have an excelle nt test on our hands. Probably worth marketing it globally. Posted by Bee at 12:57 PM 0 comments Labels: CAT 2012, CAT around the year, CAT preparation Thursday, November 25, 2010 CAT - In defence of the CAT As CAT 2010 draws to a close, we will soon be hearing a lot of feedback on the q

uality and consistency of the exam, the technology, organization, etc. It is abo ut the same time that we will hear people saying that the CAT is a pointless exa m, an exam that tests unnecessary skill sets, and an exam that is needlessly too difficult. People will tout examples of various calculation-intensive questions friends of friends of theirs saw in the paper and feel vindicated about their c laim that the CAT is a very computation-heavy random exam designed to test unnec essary things. You will probably also hear the inevitable "Why is it necessary t o do 24.5 * 35.4 in 10 seconds to be a good manager". Most of the people who say this know little to nothing about the CAT, and at any rate have not spent enough time either thinking about the paper or evaluating i t. They are happy to accept the established stereotype and help it along. My colleagues and I have been taking the CAT almost every year and can state une quivocally that the quality of the paper has improved with time. There are 3 key myths that people have been spreading about the CAT 1. It is a calculation-intensive exam: On an average, about 5 out of 40 question s in Quant + DI are of this type, and one can skip this and still score 100th pe rcentile in CAT. CAT was calculation-intensive in the late 90's, it has tested a pplication heavily in the past 10 or so years. 2. CAT does not test relevant skills to be a manager - also stated as "Why shoul d someone know Set theory to be a good manager?": At some level, CAT is an entra nce exam designed to test basic intelligence. Any academic performance is a sign al that the student can potentially do well. So, the CAT is looking for a signal of intelligence. Around two lakh students of diverse backgrounds take this exam every year. One needs to find something very basic to use it as a proxy for int elligence. Testing numerical ability, problem solving ability and comprehension ability are probably the best proxies available. What would you rather test - ge neral knowledge, science, subject-knowledge? Anything else pales in comparison. Also, remember, CAT is not an entrance exam to be a manager. It is an entrance e xam to get admission into a school that will train you to become a manager. 3. Some questions in CAT are too difficult: This is a problem that has come abou t because of a specific characteristic of India - one of large numbers. CAT need s to make a distinction between the average and the good. But if this were the o nly distinction that CAT needed to make, a consistent and simple paper would suf fice. But the CAT also needs to make the distinction between good and really goo d and really good and exceptional. Remember, they need to devise a mechanism to distinguish the top 0.2 percent within the top 1 percent. This suggests the need for creating "men and boys" questions. Questions that demarcate the exceptional from the merely very good. Any paper where the really good students can attempt 55+ out of 60 students within 135 minutes clearly indicates that this is not to o difficult. If the paper is peppered with simple questions, the exam just tests just speed, and not understanding. A slightly tougher paper that requires a hig h level of application is required for getting the top 0.2% from a sea of applic ants. Most people will agree that it does not require a genius to crack CAT. It just r equires loads of application, good decision-making ability and adequate preparat ion. Sounds like a good test for finding managerial talent to me :) Now, finally to the point that irks people the most, why should calculation-spee d be a factor at all? When the whole globe does not really rate calculation-spee d, why does India (CAT) cling to this notion? The answer again, is straightforwa rd. India still believes it is a critical skill set. And the CAT is trying to fi nd the best proxy to select smart Indian kids. Why should the CAT not test what India finds important. If anything, the CAT has been doing a lot to de-emphasise this feature. Over the past 10 years, the number of number-intensive questions

have fallen sharply, and rightly so. India is moving on, and the CAT is setting the pace. CAT cannot move on all on its own, then they will end up getting all t he wrong candidates. So, there goes my defence of the CAT. I am sure the IIMs wont care much about gi ving their viewpoint. So, here is my version of how they might have done it. Having said all this, some things irk me a lot. The complete lack of consistency in the paper is an issue that CAT needs to address. More importantly, the CAT n eeds to be error-free. Especially now that they have multiple sessions. The CAT was not error-free this year. Far from it. And god knows how they treat the wron g questions. I cannot think of a single fair way of treating error-filled papers . Hope they improve on this. Posted by Bee at 10:55 AM 1 comments Labels: CAT, CAT 2010, CAT percentile Friday, September 28, 2007 CAT scores count for no more than 20% Thanks to the RTI Act, IIM B has made it public that your CAT scores do not have a weightage of more than a fifth when admission decisions are made by the insti tute. IIM B always had placed a premium on academic prowess that spanned much more tha n the 3 to 24 months preparation that students do to crack CAT. They did and sti ll continue to place a lot of importance to a student's long term performance st arting from Class 10. So, if there is anyone out there in class X and has a long term aspiration of cracking CAT, then make sure that you score well in your boa rd exams as they matter as much as your CAT scores will 5 to 7 years from now. For those, who have crossed the 10th, 12th or graduation bridges (especially for those amongst us who crossed the bridge not so colorfully), hopes of graduating from an IIM need not come to an end. IIM Calcutta, at least till the recent pas t did not place much emphasis on your previous academic record. In fact, the Adm issions Committee Chairperson has gone on record a couple of years back that CAT score is sacrosanct and a high CAT percentile is certain to get you a GDPI call from IIM Calcutta. I can vouchsafe for that claim. I have had classmates who had eir graduation. A gentleman with a 5 CG from IIT Bombay was a Another gentleman who is presently the CEO of a fast growing managed 61% in 12 standard board exam (Tamilnadu State Board) a 59% as a BA Sociology graduate. scraped through th classmate of mine. IT company barely and graduated with

The trend continued much after I graduated from IIM C. A gentleman three years m y junior graduated from IIMC. Before joining IIMC, he graduated from Calcutta Un iversity with a B. Com degree. He had an aggregate of a little over 45% in his g raduation. Very recently, a student of mine with a 6.5 CG from BITS Pilani made it to the IIMC. However, at IIMC he made a vow to be among the top 20 and made i t to the top 18 and is presently working for a world renowned Business Consultan t. So, for all those who cannot go back and correct your scores at school and colle ge level, there are still few IIMs left that give adequate credit to one's CAT s cores. A 99.7 + percentile is likely to land you calls from a few of the IIMs, I IMC including, I hope. This is probably your only chance to redeem past sins sho uld you aim to seek an admit from one of the IIMs. I wish you all success in your CAT endeavors. Posted by 4GMAT - GMAT Prep at 2:50 PM 5 comments Labels: CAT cutoff, CAT percentile, CAT Scores, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta, IIM GDPI Calls

Wednesday, March 22, 2006 Cracking CAT a year later potentially costs $200000 Well.... all of us have read this. Top salaries of fresh IIM graduates have touc hed $200,000. It may not even make sense to convert the salary into Indian Rupee s - as the figure almost looks mythical. However, it is true. Without delving in to the depths of how many students from the IIMs manage to get such salaries, wh ether it it CTC or gross pay or take home etc., let us look what does that mean to you as a CAT aspirant. 1. Making it to a top B school such as an IIM a year earlier makes so much of a difference to your career. Look at it this way. Let us say, you are 25 and you e xpect to work till you turn 60. Each additional year of work with an MBA means s o much in furthering your career on a fast track - whats worse - some of these j ob openings do not exist without a top ranking MBA degree. So, crack CAT soon. C rack it this year. It is better not to postpone somethings. 2. Well I am going to contradict myself. The career paths and astronomical salar ies that are talked about are typically reserved for students of the elite insti tutes. So, do not do an MBA or a PGDM from any random Business School. Let us sa y, unfortunately you get only 97 percentile in CAT this year and have managed an admit only from a not so very popular XYZ Management Institute - it might make sense not to take that admit and slog another year to crack CAT and get an admit from one of the elite institutes such as the top 3 or 4 IIMs, XL, FMS etc., Rem ember - most people DO ONLY ONE MBA in their lifetime. Even if your MBA educatio n is delayed by a year, do not settle for anything less than the best. 3. What does it take to get there? Thankfully, IIM A has given some clarity on what you should aim to get in each o f the sections. A 25% net score in each section with a overall score of 33.33%. This alone will not guarantee you a call. However, one is unlikely to get calls without this score. So, if you are practicing your Mock CAT Tests right now, mak e sure that you set targets that are a little more than what IIM A has stated so that you are well equipped to crack the cut off on the D day. Best wishes for all those who aspire to make it to the top IIMs this year. K S Baskar Director - Ascent Education - classes, correspondence course for CAT Posted by 4GMAT - GMAT Prep at 12:03 PM 0 comments Friday, January 13, 2006 The surprise in CAT 2005 Well, the IIMs had to have the last laugh. This time it was in terms of a reduce d number of questions. 30 questions to a section and a total of 90 questions. Each section had 10 one-mark questions and 20 two-marks questions. When the IIMs reduce the number of questions, the biggest victim was the choice that a test t aker had in terms of the number of questions that he could skip. For instance, when there were 165 questions in CAT as in CAT 1999 and CAT 2000, you had 55 questions to each section. And in the case of quant and DI, from thes e 110 questions you had to choose 40 to 45 questions and get most of them right. So, you could skip about 65 to 70 questions. That is a lot of choice that is av ailable to you. But when you have only 30 questions in hand, and 20 of those are 2 marks questions, then every question you skip or get wrong will cost you a lo t. And it looks like it did cost a lot to many who had scored quite well in the practice test. Having gone through the paper, I believe the section that was tough was the Verb al section. Some of the questions that carried two marks had two plausible answe rs and it is mere chance that the answer a student chose matched that of the cor

rect ones as IIMs would have thought. And one big revelation this time was that the IIMs clearly mentioned that the ne gative marks for getting a question incorrect is one-third the correct answer. S o, all the double guessing of progressive negative that CAT test takers in the p ast had to put up with is off. What next in CAT 2006? They might just decide that in addition to having negativ e marks for getting a question incorrect, they would want to penalize you for no t attempting a question. Well, CAT 2002 or 2003 had a Math question using this c oncept! Posted by 4GMAT - GMAT Prep at 6:50 PM 0 comments Wednesday, January 05, 2005 CAT 2004 - not all questions are equal CAT 2004 sprung a surprise - how can CAT not have a surprise? For the first time in the history of CAT, IIMs have assigned different weightage s to different questions - in the quant section there were 20 one mark questions and 15 two marks questions - totalling up to 50 marks. In the DI section, there were 26 one mark question and 12 two marks questions adding up to 50 marks and in the verbal section you had more variety - half a mark questions (10 of them), one mark questions and two mark questions adding up to 50 marks. Therefore, the age old advice that all questions are equal and carry the same ma rk will no longer apply. To that extent one can claim that there is a paradigm s hift in the way one should go about strategizing for CAT. However, the truth is that nothing has really changed as far as how a student sh ould look at CAT - because in most cases the one mark questions in CAT were cons iderably easier than the two mark questions and the half a mark question in verb al were the fill in the blanks question and were the - "see and mark" types. Posted by 4GMAT - GMAT Prep at 1:40 PM 0 comments Monday, September 27, 2004 What is with all the hype about the CAT cut off, 6 calls, workex, non-engineers A lot of time, energy, anxiety is usually spent on predicting / knowing / doing a post mortem analysis of what the cut off in CAT will be? Though a post mortem analysis after you have taken your CAT might have very litt le to offer you other than few anxious moments and some sleepless nights, the an alysis of what happened in previous CATs could hold a lot of value before you ta ke CAT. CAT has changed a lot over the last decade or so. In the early 1990s, CAT used t o have anything between 180 to 220 questions comprising two to four sections. Th ere were years in which CAT had sectionwise time limits. Those seem to be somewh ere in the distant past. As mentioned in the most recent CAT bulletin, there are no sectionwise time limits these days. Time limits apart, the kind of questions that appear in CAT and its impact on scores and cut off have changed dramatical ly over the last 10 years. Of the 180 questions that were there in CAT in early 90s, 40 to 45 used to be fr om the verbal section (you can a actually read it as vocabulary section). We guy s used to know the GRE Barrons word list in reverse order and use all sorts of n onsensical words like pleonasm and tautology in our day to day vocabulary. It di d help. One got to answer and get a net score of about 30 plus in less than 15 m inutes from this section. RC used to be a separate section and had mostly factua l questions. Quant was usually considered to be the tough section. But Quant in those days mainly comprised direct application of concepts or formulae. All those have changed. For instance, the most recent CATs have only 150 questio

ns. The 30 odd questions that have found their way out include the vocabulary se ction. Quant is no more direct application of formulae. Along with these changes have gone the days of 130 and 140 attempts in CAT. A friend and an IIM classmate of mine, K Venkatesh (CEO Maarga Info Systems) att empted 177 out of the 180 questions in the CAT that we took in 1991. He got call s from all the four IIMs, (we did not have I and K those days!) and converted B, C and L and joined C. While, I myself managed to attempt about 130 questions in that CAT. However, any average student who gets into an IIM today will be ecstatic if he/s he manages to attempt 130 and would even brand CAT as a very easy exam. In the l ast few CATs at least, candidates scoring above 99.5 plus percentile in CAT need not attempt anything above 80 questions to be there. What is probably needed is high levels of accuracy 95% plus accuracy. i.e., one should get about 75 of the 80 questions right. Will continue later... K S Baskar PGDM - IIM Calcutta - Class of '94 Director - Ascent Education Visit 2graduate - Information on Graduate Education Posted by 4GMAT - GMAT Prep at 8:19 PM 1 comments Home Subscribe to: Posts (Atom) Useful Links * 2IIM's CAT Study Material, Tests prepared by IIM Alumni * Free CAT Practice Questions, Answers, Shortcuts * CAT, IIM Discussion Forum Blog Archive * ? 2011 (2) o ? January (2) + CAT 2011 - Thoughts based on CAT 2010 + Belief in Self - That is ALL the difference * ? 2010 (3) o ? December (1) + Admissions into IIMs - How important is work exper... o ? November (2) + CAT can now be taken through the year - What does ... + CAT - In defence of the CAT * ? 2007 (1) o ? September (1) + CAT scores count for no more than 20% * ? 2006 (2) o ? March (1) + Cracking CAT a year later potentially costs $20000... o ? January (1) + The surprise in CAT 2005 * ? 2005 (1) o ? January (1) + CAT 2004 - not all questions are equal

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