It seems sort of strange for me to write about what an exam is AFTER I am finished with it, but I just realised I never properly said what this exam is all about.  CAT, or the Common Admission Test is a two hour exam that is conducted yearly by the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), for admission into their Post Graduate Programmes in Management.  This test is much more interesting to write than any conventional test.  Here, it isn't knowledge that is tested as such - rather, how good you are at keeping your cool and working under pressure!  The questions are all multiple-choice type, four choices per question, and the areas tested are mathematics (which even a 15 year old student should be able to do), English, Logic.  Seems pretty easy?  Yes it does, until I tell you about the constraints!

There is negative marking first of all.  You get 1 mark for a correct answer and -1/3 for a wrong one.  This choice of -1/3 is probabilistic - if you answer the test totally randomly, you will get a score of zero!  Secondly, the number of questions will be more than 150 (sometimes 165, 185, etc.) which makes it absolutely impossible to answer everything in 120 minutes.  And to top it all, there is a mix of dead simple questions, difficult ones, and questions that are easy but take a lot of time to do.  Everything depends on HOW you pick questions to answer, and your accuracy under those conditions!  If a CAT paper has three sections, you will have to get a minimum expected score in each section to qualify (that means, you cannot just focus on an area you are good at and leave the rest!).  Also, nothing about the exam is rigidly fixed - the number of questions, sections, etc. can all change.  The passages given for the Reading Comprehension part (5 or 6 passages) can each have upwards of 700 words (sometimes 1000 word passages are given)!

Since you cannot write this test without any preparation at all (atleast I can't), I went for classes for CAT at a place called TIME.  I've mentioned Mock CATs several times on this site - well, you see they conducted tests based on the CAT pattern every Sunday, and it's because of this that I got practice in writing a CAT Exam.

So after that introduction to what CAT was, now let me talk about CAT 2002!!  CAT 2002 was held yesterday, November 24, 2002.  There were three sections in this paper, and 150 questions.  Two days before the CAT, I just had a glance at TIME's course material - basically the logic and the mathematics part.  And the night before the actual exam, I watched John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness (terrific movie, I recorded it in 1997).

So how did my exam go?  I think it was quite OK!  I was worried about two things - first, I did not want to mess up the time management part of it.  On more than one occasion in the Mock CATs, I would spend more time than planned on two of the sections, thereby spoiling the third!  Second, I also hoped I would be able to maintain my concentration and keep my cool in the two hours.  I was extra careful about time, so that part went off without a hitch, and there was no problem with the concentration part either.  I am really happy about that.

Finally, I answered about 85-90 questions out of 150.  I think that is a pretty good number of attempts.  The only thing that will make a difference now is, how ACCURATE I was, and how all the OTHER 100,000 students performed (CAT is totally relative)!  This is totally out of my control now, so I don't think about it, and I hope for the best!

I was so happy and relieved when I came home yesterday though, because a major weight on my mind was lifted - CAT was over!  So afterwards we (parents, brother and me) all went to see Resident Evil, which was released here on Friday.  A very cool movie, with a continuous supply of scares (which is what I wanted), and gore (although I felt they could have piled on a bit more blood and icky stuff)!  Best scene - the grid lasers!!  And my brother bought Linkin Park's Reanimation album and I finally got to hear all the songs!  Good stuff, my favourites are FRGT/10N and ENTH E END.