Change 1: The paper will now be a two and a half hour paper.
Change 2: The cut- offs for the paper have already been announced.

The paper will now be a 150 minutes test

I am sure we all know that there was a student who maxed the English section in CAT 2005. Is this something the IIMs feel happy about? Have you ever wondered why the CAT paper is either difficult with a few questions or if it is easy then the number of questions is substantially high? Why haven’t we heard any student getting 150 out of 150 or 185 out of 185? Are the paper setters mean and sadistic? No, definitely not. Their point of view is logical. If a student gets say, 44 in English, then I know that the level of the student was 44 marks. But if a student gets 50 out of 50 then I will never know the level of that student. In a way the paper was not sufficient for us to zero in on the student’s exact talent. To explain this further, let’s say two students get 50 on 50 in English, now how will we know who is better student, can I assume that both are equally good? Is the case of two students with a 50 the same as two students with a 44? No, again. If I give a 100 mark paper in English to both students will they both get 100 each? Unlikely, right? So we do realize that a student maxing a section or the paper is not exactly good news.

Hence what is our analysis? If we have the same number of questions or even if we have 112.5 questions (90*5/4) the likelihood of somebody maxing the paper is high. So it makes sense for the number of questions to increase. It may go back to 150 questions or perhaps more than 150 questions. Before we wrap this up completely, I want to submit another rationale on why the number of questions will increase.

One of the attributes which the CAT tests and which is important for any good manager is selection. With less number of questions selection is of no relevance. The previous CAT was very knowledge intensive which is great as a one-off test. But as a pattern, if the CAT becomes knowledge intensive then it would no longer be an aptitude test. And selection implies more questions.

The cut-offs for sections at 25 pc and over all cut-offs at 33.33 pc (for IIM Ahmedabad)

Obviously, all students who get even GD-PI calls from IIM-A would have to fulfill these cut-off criteria. So at least 700 students (approximate number of IIM-A interview calls) should clear these cut-offs. If we look at the cut-offs last year as a percentage then for DI and Quant they came to around 20 pc. Also we know quite a few students who got calls with scores less than 50 (1/3 of aggregate). Considering that the time for the test has increased, the scores would improve. But for a sizeable number to definitely clear the cut-off, it will require an easier paper.

Consider another aspect of last year’s paper: anybody who got 2 to 3 two markers right in Math or DI will be well on his or her way to clear the cut-off, whereas a student who is unlucky and makes some silly mistakes on the same questions will face quite a problem. Basically chance can play a role if the cut-off is 10 marks, but to clear cut-offs of 20 marks it will require more than chance. All this points to the fact that the difficulty level will either decrease for this year’s CAT or the paper will be a mix of easy and difficult questions.

Another aspect that deserves some analysis is the sections.

A three course meal?

Historically the CAT has rarely experimented with the number of sections. A four section test was once changed into a three section test. To explain the change let’s look at the four section test. The four section test had 100 marks for English and 85 marks for Math and DI. As finance and software became large recruiters from the IIMs the focus shifted from communication and presentation skills to analytical and quantitative skills and this was reflected in the CAT paper by giving equal weightages to English, Reasoning and Quantitative. Of course equal marks to each section need not imply equal weightages. Cryptic? Let’s see.

Till 2003, students extremely proficient with linguistics could potentially score anything between 38-43. On the other hand a similarly good student in Math or DI would score 28-35 in the respective sections. This meant that students who were good at English had an advantage towards scoring higher total scores. Hence in some sense English still had a higher weightage.

The solution to this occurred in 2004, in that year highest in English was the same as that of Math. Even the distribution of the top percentile was similar. Of course the DI marks distribution was still significantly different from the other two sections. In 2005, all the three sections had the same kind of difficulty level. I think this year too, the difficulty level of the sections would be the same. Also it is unlikely that the number of sections will change.

Conclusion

Guys, please focus on your selection, it will play an important role come November. Remember that whatever happens, the exam is still a relative exam and everyone is facing the same kind of music. Of course the students who do well think the music is some beautiful symphony and the students who get scared think it is some cacophony.

Best of Luck and Private Message me for doubts!

Munira Lokhandwala is an alumna from IIM Calcutta, batch of 1999. She has been associated with CAT coaching since 2001. In 2005, she started Catalyst Group tuitions for CAT. (www.catalyst4cat.com) she is a regular CAT taker herself. These are her scores:
Year – Overall percentile
2005 – 100 %ile
2004 – 99.99 %ile
2003 – 99.98 %ile

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