Chennai, Nov. 19: About 8,500 students and professionals in the city and 1.9 lakh MBA aspirants all over India wrote the Common Admission Test on Sunday to enter the prestigious IIMs and other B-schools. The two-and-a-half hour exam started at 10 am in six centres in the city. Mr Ragavan Sarathy, a final year B.E (ECE) student from SSN College of Engineering, said, “This time the question paper setters had prepared lot of tests for accuracy. The data interpretation part was easy, but the English section was tough, as the number of choices were lesser than earlier.”
This year, 21,000 more students took the exam when compared to last year, despite a change in the eligibility criteria. The candidates included 22,000 from Other Backward Castes and about 12,500 from SC-ST categories.
Speaking to this correspondent, Mr C.P. Vasan, Chennai city head, Career Launcher, said, “There are three sections as it was last year, but with 25 questions each. Last year there were 30 questions with four marks each and had five answer choices, as compared to four last year. The total marks are 300, compared to 150 last year.” He said the increase in answer choices made the paper difficult at first glance. However, the traditionally tough quantitative analysis and data interpretation had relatively easier questions. “English, on the other hand, with very close options was quite tough. No questions were set on vocabulary or parajumbles. Instead, there were some questions on fact-inference-judgement,” he said.
The expected cut-off for data interpretation is 30 to 33, 28 to 32 for English understanding and 38 to 42 for quantitative analysis. The total cut-off is expected to be 105 to 110. A new eligibility criteria stipulated that students in the general category need to secure 50 percent and their counterparts in the reserved categories had to secure 45 percent marks during graduation. The IIMs are expected increase the seats in view of the Oversight Committee’s report recommending a hike in the capacity of Central educational institutions by 54 per cent over the next three years. |
