Driving the Common Admission Test (CAT) 2015 back to its pristine glory, IIM Ahmedabad, the CAT 2015 convening IIM has taken a decision to conduct CAT 2015 in a single day in 2 sessions only instead of longer testing window.
The decision has many implications for the CAT 2015 aspirants. While the exam is proposed to be more aspirant friendly the single day CAT 2015 does not offer much scope in knowing the ongoing test pattern, choosing testing day and session or test venue in order of preference although the facility to choose the most preferred test cities would be available for the test takers.
Finalize the preparation in one go
Whatever you are preparing for CAT 2015 must be finalized with the concept of six sigma i.e. leaving no scope for errors on the topics, suggests Prof S K Agarwal, expert on Verbal Ability for CAT 2015. The study of the concept, attempting the practice exercises and mocks should synchronize and shouldn’t call for frequent revisits on the topic.
Earlier when you had 21 days testing window for CAT, there was the opportunity to assess yourself and have the feel of the type, pattern and the difficulty level of the test questions. You could make quick changes in your preparation as most of the candidates preferred to opt for CAT exam in the second half of the 3 weeks long testing window. This long testing window had its adverse implications also and number of candidates remained dissatisfied with the varying level of difficulty and percentile rank in earlier CAT examinations. This has also been one of the reasons to organize CAT 2015 in a single day.
Re-organize strategically
One day CAT 2015 may take you across the river with high percentile or can doom your future, if the preparation is not well organized and is not moving at faster and accurate pace to get completed by the middle of September 2015. This will also leave room for further practice, plugging the holes and assessing you in quality mocks on CAT 2015 pattern.
For the next 100 days, the best will be to complete your preparation in next 75 days and leave 25+ days for practice and replica mocks. Analyze where you have gone wrong, what needs to be further strengthened and how much time it would take to be accurate and fast on it.
After a few days from now, you may not have time to begin something new as the pattern of CAT 2015 is again proposed to change. It may have different type of Quant and verbal to allow for percentile rank making room for academic diversity. Accordingly, your focus on Verbal will be more demanding along with on Quant and DI.
What you need to do is to make a to-do list for each day, write down the topics on which questions appeared in past 6 years of CAT exams and include them in your preparation plan. Now find out which are the topics where you are strong enough and which are the topics that need your focused attention. Now you must further improve your strong areas to the zero error level and try to locate and remove the weaknesses on other topics. You should be clear enough to understand how much time would be required to gain expertise in your weak areas. If the required time appears too much, leave those topics as CAT 2015 will have equal marks for every question. Better to prepare on other topics.
Please remember the proportionate time to solve the CAT 2015 test paper stands reduced. You have to be fast as well as accurate in attempting the exam with high level of accuracy. It wouldn’t matter if a few questions are not attempted by you, but if they are attempted wrong, you would lose a great deal of percentile in CAT 2015. So be focused on this strategy also.
Single day CAT 2015: More aspirant friendly
Prof Tathagata Bandyopadhyay convener CAT 2015, faculty and admission chair at IIM Ahmedabad says “For CAT 2015, at an operational level, we are planning to have it on a single-day in two-sessions rather than on two-days in four sessions like last year.”
According to him, it would improve CAT exam further “This will help in enhancing operational efficiency and quality of the test content”
CAT 2015 may surely prove to be more aspirant friendly than earlier CAT exams as CAT 2015 test taker is free from scheduling the test date and session selecting the most convenient test date. Since there would be only 2 test sessions on the testing day, no speculation has to be made. In all probability the CAT 2015 would be held on weekend.
The long nightmares when to schedule the test and get the best and convenient date as per the suitability during the 15 or 20 days testing window are over. Aspirants will get the information about their test site and session from the CAT 2015 exam centre after the last date of registration is over. Candidates now have to focus on preparation more while scheduling of test will be taken care of by the testing agency TCS.
1 day, 2 sessions, same type of questions, same pattern and same exam composition are in store of CAT 2015 for the aspirants. No more calculation is required to assess what appeared and when during the 40 separate sessions, what is the difficulty level through each session and how the score for each session could and each day would be normalized by CAT testing agency and IIM for such long testing window.
CAT 2015 scoring and normalization is proposed to be thoroughly transparent. The difficulty level through all the 2 sessions is expected to remain the same and the scoring and normalization of scores will not create an issue in CAT 2015 as happened in CAT 2013.
Related Article
CAT 2015: Quant no more to dominate the percentile rank; says convener Prof T Bandyopadhyay
CAT 2015: Proposed changes at operational and content level; ensure well devised preparation line
CAT 2015 to offer greater diversity in IIM class rooms with Level playing field for all candidates
Will CAT 2015 Exam pattern change? Know the Expert's anticipations
Stay tuned to MBAUniverse.com for more updates on CAT 2015
