CAT out of bag: 60 Questions, No surprises in pattern, rated Moderate

The CAT is finally out of the bag! The Session 1 of Day 1, which started at 10 am and ended at 12: 30 pm, has not thrown much surprises. According to the test takers at a Delhi NCR test center the test was Moderate in its difficulty level.

According to an expert from IMS Learning, Qualitative section was relatively higher on the difficulty level.

There were total 60 questions in both the sections QA&DI, VA&LR, with 30 questions in each.
Overall the CAT 2011 exam pattern sticked to its earlier announced pattern. Candidates were first presented with section on Quantitative Ability & Data Interpretation, followed by Verbal Ability & Logical Reasoning.
The length of the test was 2 hours 20 minutes, which meant 70 minutes for each section. Once a section ended, candidates could no longer go back to it, as per earlier announcement by IIM-C. Every question had 4 options A,B,C,D.

Before the start of the test, there was a 15-minute tutorial to familiarise candidates with navigation and functionality available during the test. An on-screen timer was available for candidates to check how much time they have left for each section. No breaks were given during the test.

At the time of filing this report there was no reports of technical glitch and the Session 1 has went off smoothly.

The CAT 2011 exam has only two sections, instead of three as in the earlier versions of CAT. The exam window will remain open till 18 November, 2011.

CAT 2011, the 20-day long computer based test for admission to the IIMs and 150+ other B-schools, is being delivered across 68 test centers in 78 test centers in 36 cities across the country. A total of 2.05 lakh students will be taking the CAT 2011 this year in the entire test period of 20 days. Compared to last year, this year CAT has seen 0.49 per cent of increase in the number of test takers.

The maximum number of test takers is from Delhi, followed by Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai.

Forty different sets of question papers have been prepared for CAT this year. The results of CAT 2011 will be declared on January 11. Prometric, entrusted with the task of conducting the test in the online format, had released a
practice test paper earlier to familiarize the candidates with the online format.

MBAUniverse.com will keep you posted on more highlights from CAT 2011 exam.