New Delhi: The Common Admission Test (CAT) is set to add descriptive questions to its question paper in the 2015 exams, according to a report in a leading daily.
The move comes in a bid to increase diversity in the student body of the IIMs. The change in format might give students other those from engineering to crack the exam.
The duration for the exam has also been increased from 170 to 180 minutes. In 2014, the IIMs had increased the duration of the exam 140 to 170 minutes.
CAT is an exam given by students to apply to the best business schools in the country including 19 Indian Institute of Management.
IIM A will be conducting the exam this year on November 29, in two sessions across 650 centres. The question paper has 100 multiple choice questions.
This year students will have to give direct answer for certain descriptive questions, CAT Convener Tathagata Bandyopadhyay said.
According to the report, this year’s CAT question paper will be in the three sections. The sections will be quantitative aptitude, data interpretation and logical reasoning, and verbal and reading comprehension.
With the increase in duration of the exam, students will have only 60 minutes for each segment of the question paper, the report says. The data interpretation and logical reasoning section will have 32 questions, while quantitative aptitude and verbal and reading comprehension segments will have 34 questions each.
Students will also be allowed to give a choice of four cities as opposed to a choice of three cities allowed in 2014. Students will be able to choose from 136 cities.
The results of CAT 2015 will be announced in January 2016.