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CAT 2010: What we liked, what we did not on Day 1

First-day first-show at the CAT is over, and no untoward incidents have been reported until now. Two of us from the PaGaLGuY HQ attended the 10 am slot test at two different centres in Mumbai and Pune.

We have written down our experiences in the form of a timeline.

Apurv Pandit
October 27, 10 am slot, Sri Balaji Society, Pune

I reached the centre around 7:30 am at Sri Balaji Society Group of Institutes campus, just a few hundred meters off the Pune-Mumbai Highway near the Wakad flyover. There was good parking space for both two-wheelers and four-wheelers on campus, so I parked mine and arrived in front of the building entrance that had 'CAT 2010 Test Center' written on it.

The crowd was quite thin with barely a couple of hundred candidates -- nothing compared to the mega-congregation of candidates one has come to expect outside CAT centres.

I spoke to a few candidates waiting outside. Many weren't really from Pune, but from towns near Pune such as Satara, Ahmednagar, etc. One guy was sullen because he had forgotten his CAT voucher. Everybody immediately asked him to call someone to deliver it to him as there were still 45 minutes to go until 8.30 am. But unfortunately for him he was from Satara, about 120 kms from Pune.

Around 8 am, we were asked to enter the centre and start the checking-in process. Immediately upon entering, we were asked to fill in our name, CAT registration number, mobile number and e-mail address in a register. The register was a standard register and didn't have any Prometric branding on it, yet we were being made to fill it as if it were part of the checking-in process. So I asked one of the attendants why we were asked to fill it. He vaguely replied that it was being asked for security reasons. It was unconvincing, as no security register ever asks for a CAT registration number or e-mail address. When I asked the attendant if the Balaji Society b-schools would use the data to send e-mail and SMS promotion to me, he simply asked me to leave the mobile and e-mail fields blank.

After filling up the register, I climbed to the fourth floor, where all the testing labs were located. After frisking us and checking our documents, they sealed our belongings such as mobile phones, wallets, stationery, keys, in a bag and gave us a token. They then took my photograph and fingerprints at the biometric kiosk and within 15 minutes, I was allotted a computer. The process was pretty smooth and the staff seemed sure of what they were doing.

I was allocated a computer at around 8:20 am. Thereafter, there was nothing much to do until 9.30 am except stare at others. I went off to sleep and noticed that many others were doing the same. I could guess that many would have woken up around 5 am to reach this centre in time, especially those who were coming from opposite ends of Pune city.

I woke up with a jolt at 9.30 am. Instruction sheets with dos and don't's were passed to us along with a pencil, an eraser and a stapled set of blank papers (12 sides) for rough work.

I could spot a total of seven distinct invigilators who were making periodic appearances in my room. After 9.30 am, they started making announcements one after another -- about the rules, that we should look at the tutorial before starting the exam, etc. Soon after, they logged us in to a screen that showed two buttons. 'Start test' and 'Start tutorial'. We were asked to not touch either until announced to do so.

10 am arrived and people started getting impatient. At 10.04 am (according to the computer screen clock), we were finally asked to begin. I took a quick look at the 15-minute tutorial and then started the test. A pointer here -- the tutorial can be seen only once, so don't skim through it expecting that you could restart it for a detailed look later. Go through it once, and go through it well.

The test started. Same pattern as announced -- 20 questions each in Data Interpretation/ Logical Reasoning, Verbal Ability and Quantitative Ability. The paper was relatively easy, except for about a dozen questions which qualified as above-average tough. Except for around half a dozen questions from quant which were really tough and required conceptual understanding, the rest of the paper was easy to moderate in terms of difficulty. Since I hadn't prepared for even a minute, it took me time to revisit the concepts from my memory to solve the questions. But I could figure that somebody who's been in the loop would have done them faster.

There was one question with which I had a problem. It was a question involving sets, where the relationship between two sets was established with a symbol, ostensibly a subset or a superset symbol. That symbol appeared as a box on my screen, the kind that appears in Windows when it tries to render an unrecognised character. I made a complaint to the invigilators, but they were rigidly uncooperative in getting the error clarified. "The test is just as it has been sent by Prometric. We cannot do anything about it," was their flat reply.

After 2 hours and 15 minutes, the test ended. The invigilators waited for everyone in the room to finish and then proceeded to collect the rough papers, pencil and erasers lent to us. Around 12:45 pm, we were asked to leave the centre and after collecting my personal belongings by submitting the token, I was out of the centre.

Glitch-free and well-organised

Vasundhara Vyas
October 27, 10 am slot, Institute of Business Studies and Research, Navi Mumbai

I took the CAT after eight years and in a completely new avatar. Though I was a little nervous when I entered the test centre, I consoled myself that if I got lucky, I will have the technical glitches to blame it all on. After all my first experience with CAT 2002 wasn't all that great either. But to my very pleasant surprise there were no glitches and I could sit through the test, attempting more questions than I expected. Here's how my second encounter with CAT went:

I was lucky to have the CAT test centre within walking distance from my home. Since I had not visited the centre before, I took an auto and was there in less than three minutes. It was almost 8:45 am by then and I was praying that they allow me to enter. I was told by everybody to be at the centre two hours before, so the tension was evident. But as I spotted the entrance of the building and started climbing the stairs, there was a faculty members standing there to guide me. She took a look at my admit card, highlighted my Test ID, and my name and asked me to proceed to the fifth floor.

On the fifth floor was the security desk, where one male guard, one female guard and several faculty members were waiting for candidates. I was asked to switch off my cell phone and surrender all my belonging. Prepared for this, I had not carried anything besides a little cash and my house keys. In one minute, the officials asked my thrice to deposit my belongings. Then the lady guard took me to a empty room for further checking.

Once through security, I was asked to start the registration process. I took my place in front of a webcam, got my picture clicked and then was asked to place my finger on the biometric scanner -- right index finger thrice followed by the left index finger thrice.

Post the registration process, I was asked to wait in the same room, where already 15 men were sitting. I realised, I was the only girl there. There were candidates who were allowed to come in till 9:30 am.

We were then given our admit cards back, which now carried the computer number assigned to us. In overenthusiasm or nervousness, a Mr Manoj Kapoor grabbed the form of a Manoj Kumar and finally had to exchange it when his name was finally checked. During this 40-minute long wait, there were senior faculty members from the institute who dropped in to make small talk and wish us luck.

Proceeding to the computer lab, adjacent to the registration room, I took my place at the computer screen. The first thing that caught my attention was the dense smell of fresh cardboard that had been used to create partitions between computer screens. It took me a good 10 minutes to get used to the smell. The other thing were the loose wires that were hanging from my machine and the machine next to mine. One of the people on duty spotted it and tucked them under the table.

At 9:45 we were asked to start the 15-minute tutorial. Nine minutes into the tutorial, one of the candidates in the room ended his tutorial and pressed the 'Start your Test' button. It caused a little commotion since everybody else's tutorials were ended even though there were a full five minutes to go and we were made to start the test.

The first section for me was Verbal. It helped me ease into the test, because atleast the questions are comparatively easier to understand than quant. During the test there were no technical glitches and it went smoothly. There was a thin yellow vertical line that went through my screen. Since it was not bothering my vision, I did not ask bring it to the attention of the people on duty.

2 hours and 15 minutes later, the test ended. I turned to look around and everybody looked as if they wanted to pop out of their seats. But we were asked to stay put. First it was the submission of the test that took long and then the uploading of the test to the Prometric server, which took longer. During this time also, loo breaks were prohibited.

While sitting there, I started talking to the person sitting next to me. We discussed a few questions, tough passages and our professions. To my surprise, he was an IIM-A grad from 2008 batch and had been taking CAT for last two years. "I wanted to start my own business, so I have taken up the franchise of a coaching centre. Till now it was only for GMAT but now I want to launch CAT," he told me.

Finally around 1 pm we were allowed to leave the lab and suddenly we heard a lady call out. Which one of you is a good speaker, she asked, and she pointed at two people including me. "There are a few members of the press waiting. Can you give an interview?" I refused, the other agreed.

On the whole, it was a good experience and glad that IIMs and Prometric got it right this time. Hopefully the performance continues in the coming days when candidates will increase. In my lab there were 22 other with me giving the test today.

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All in all, it was a frictionless first-day for CAT 2010. According to Prometric, 4,548 candidates were due to appear for the test today, a far cry from the 12,000 odd candidates that appeared on the first day of CAT 2009. CAT 2010 Convenor Prof Himanshu Rai told me that they deliberately capped the number of test-takers today so as to not overload the system. While the first day has been glitch-free, the real challenge for Prometric will be to ensure a similar experience during the weekend slots in November, when between 10,000 to 13,000 candidates are due to appear for the CAT on a single day.

It appears that several candidates today have been unable to take the exam because they forgot to bring a photo-identity card, their vouchers or the admit card or did not reach the centre by 8.30 am. According to Prof Rai: "The least we expect from them (the candidates) is the discipline of bringing proper documents and reaching their centres on time. The instructions have been given to them long before so nobody can help them (the candidates who had to miss the exam today) if they don't follow the instructions." He appealed to candidates in the future slots to ensure that they brought with them their CAT vouchers, admit cards, photo-identity cards and if applicable, their caste certificates.