On July 26, the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) has released the
official notification of Common Admission Test (CAT) 2015. As per the
notification, CAT will go through a few changes, this year.
This
year onward, a new section has been introduced i.e. Data Interpretation
and Logical Reasoning (DLIR). The candidates must note that they cannot
switch the sections from one to another; the candidates are required to
spend 60 minutes on each section.
According to a report in the
Times of India, the professor of IIM Ahmedabad, Tathagata Bandopadhyay
informed, "Last year, data interpretation (DI) was a part of QA and
logical reasoning was part of VRC. However, the number of questions from
each section will remain the same as last year. The decision has been
taken since the three sections are supposed to test different abilities
of the candidates."
This time, the duration of the examination has
also been increased to 180 minutes instead of 170 minutes. He further
added, "The reason behind increasing the duration by 10 minutes is to
allot equal time (60 minutes) to each section. This year, the students
will be given exactly an hour to complete each section. The test will
automatically move to the next section once a candidate spends an hour
on one segment". In order of selection, the candidates can select the
four test cities. The test will be held at 650 centres across 136 cities
on the same day in two sessions.
The major change in the
examination process is the introduction of written answers. Last year,
CAT was completely based on multiple choice based questions, but this
year, some questions may not be having multiple choices. Tutorial to
understand the format of the examination will be available on the
official website from October 15.