Two of the PG HQ members and their experiences with the CBT CAT. We have put in the time-line and our experiences, feel free to comment with your own experiences at different centers. We have put in this specific format so that you can ‘live’ through the experience and be prepared for it tomorrow and for the rest of the days. Tell us what you think.

Apurv’s experience:

When I exited my CAT exam at 2 pm, I was feeling quite amused at the mismanagement at my center (Bandra, Mumbai). But as I walked out of the center and heard tidings of center cancellations across the country, it made my center look like an ace show in comparison. Anyway, here is my experience of taking the computer-based CAT, first day first show slot.

• Arrived at the center (Fr Conceicao Rodrigues College of Engineering, Bandra, Mumbai) at 8:15 am. Around 250 people at my center. We were let in at 8:45 am. By about 9:20 am, I had entered my computer lab and began with the registration.
• Everything was fine in the process until the part that used technology arrived. They took 10 minutes to register me due to a server snag while allocating me a terminal. It was like waiting at an airline check-in counter with a failed computer. Anyway, once they got the network up, their biometric device and digital camera failed. After 20 minutes, I was sitting at my terminal. At 10:10 am, the 15-minute tutorial started, which we had already seen on the CAT website.
• We all waited for 10:30 am for something to happen on the screen, but nothing happened. After some time, we started getting impatient and the invigilators had no clue. But they assured us that we would get our full 2 hours 15 minutes of the test.
• The test started around 10:50 am. Thereafter, things went quite smoothly as per plan. I’ll omit the test description here due to the legal non-disclosure clause.
• The test ended at 1:05 pm. Logically, they should have collected our material and let us go. However, none of the five proctors and invigilators in our room knew how to end the test and log us out. So we were made to wait again. After about half hour of waiting, patiences started to run out again. A few people from other towns had trains to catch back home and some had taken half day from office. But all were held back because the staff did not know how to end the test. After about 40 minutes, two people with trains to catch decided that they had had enough and left. While leaving, they were made to sign agreements which relinquished the center of any responsibility in case their scores were lost. It was not a happy sight.
• After more than an hour, two guys from Prometric (or NIIT) entered the room and asked the invigilators to log out using the same username-passwords they had used to log us in. This really made some people lose their temper, as everyone had been held back hour due to lack of such a simple instruction. People left, but not without sarcastic comments hurled at the staff for their untrained-ness.
• I exited the center into a huge huddle of TV channel reporters, who informed us of the fiasco nationwide.

All in all, not that bad an experience, considering that the contrast is with having a canceled test.

Allwin’s experience:

Now I was excited about CAT (6th time and all that), I have very good memories attached to the times I’ve written the exam. So early morning I left home to reach the center at 8am. Here is my experience of the first day, first show.

• The signs of delay were rather evident right off the bat. I took the exam at Thakur Polytechnic and even though I had come in at 8am, everyone was allowed it at around 9.15. We were asked to sit in different rooms and then the proctors came in to take us to the lab
• At 9.55am, 5 minutes before the exam was supposed to start, I was still standing outside the lab and there were a few more people ahead of me. It didn’t look like we would start the exam at 10am.
• I was ushered in and sat at the PC I was supposed to, without having done my bio metrics. Looks like they were running slow with the bio metric thing and they told the rest of the people who hadn’t fingerprinted that they would get a chance to get finger printed after they wrote the exam.
• After being seated, we were all told to reboot our machines. All 20 – 25 of us had to do so. Now there are multiple logins, the OS login, the Exam login which needs to be entered by the proctors. The reboot took around 5 minutes for me and then the test software took another 5 – 7 minutes to initialize. The whole thing was slow and heck it was 11am and we hadn’t even started the exam.
• 11.15am, my exam started ( for people wondering about the time, the PC displays the time), you are not allowed to take your watch/phone et al in to the computer lab. Three times, I click on start the exam and it would throw me back to the prompt and the proctor had to come in an enter the password to proceed.
• 17 questions into my clickfest, I saw the stunning windows ‘svchost.exe’ error. I got a bit alarmed and called the proctor, he happily clicked the ‘close’ button on the error and asked me to proceed. I grin, proceed and poof the screen goes blank. I call the proctor again and guess what, the PC now had to be restarted. Ah god, had to go through that evil 10 minute or so wait time till I could start again. Thankfully Prometric got it right here and I was able to resume the questions from the point the crash occurred. He told me ‘not to click so much’, how wise and technical eh?
• I answered all the question and then exited the exam. Now here Apurv’s experience was different. Apparently some kind of password was required for the exam to end, but it wasn’t the case with my exam. I hope I get to view my scores. If you have had similar or dissimilar experiences, let us know.
• 2 hours into the exam, I decided to leave. Some folks had started leaving and I decided I too had had enough. I got myself fingerprinted and left the center. While I was musing about how the show was not run ‘perfectly’, I heard about the rescheduling across the nation.
• The paper had 60 Qs, 20 QA, 20 DI/LR and 20 VA. I haven’t prepared for CAT for a single day in the last three years and my feeling is that the difficulty level of CAT was the least I’ve experienced. The Quant and English sections were really easy and so was the DI. A really easy paper, but heck, its all relative isn’t it. There was no information about negative marking. I clicked answers for all 60 Qs.

Important NOTE: Do not read selectively and strike off the negative marking in CAT 2009. According to Professor Deodhar, the negative marking “will be on the same pattern as last year”. A Practical guide to CAT released sometime back also said, “There is no penalty for questions that are left un-attempted and negative points will be given for wrong answers.”