4, 000 candidates take CAT

[sajiv]

KOZHIKODE: More than 4,000 candidates out of the nearly 4,500 candidates who were allotted Kozhikode as test centre for the Common Admission Test (CAT), the entrance test for admission into the prestigious Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), took the test in the city on Sunday.

Kozhikode was the only test centre in Kerala. The six venues were St. Joseph's College, Devagiri, Providence Girls HSS, JDT Islam Polytechnic, JDT Islam HSS, Kendriya Vidyalaya No. 1, East Hill and St. Joseph's Boys HSS. The examination was held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Last year, 3,750 candidates were allotted Kozhikode as test centre.

Questions: The examination paper this year had more questions from Verbal Ability (VA) section concerning English language. It had 25 questions each from Data Interpretation (DI) and Quantitative Ability, the latter comprising questions from mathematics. Every correct answer fetched four marks, while an incorrect answer cost the candidate one mark.

IIM, Kozhikode (IIM-K) conducted the examination in Kozhikode, Chennai and Coimbatore this year.

A total of 22,050 candidates out of the nearly 24,500 students, who were allotted these three as test centres, wrote the examination on Sunday. Nearly 2.8 lakh students had applied for the examination for the 1800-odd seats in seven IIMs — Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Indore, Kozhikode, Lucknow and Shillong, this year.

Last year, the total number of applicants was 2.12 lakh. Admissions to more than 100 non-IIM institutions are also based on CAT scores.