JOIN USFresh problems dog CAT candidates
Questions are being repeated not just from the previous years’ papers, but across slots as well! Besides, for those who have already given the exams, questions are being freely discussed on online forums.
The questions repeating across the time slots was reported by a few students. Sridhar (name changed), who took the exam of Day 3, said that three to four such questions had appeared on Day 1 and Day 2 and he realised this after speaking to his friends, who took the exams before him. At the centre of a lot of heartburn is the non-disclosure agreement that students sign before taking the exam, agreeing not to disclose any of the questions to others.
But online forum moderators at popular sites for CAT aspirants like pagalguy.com, have clearly deleted questions by users. Students disclosed that online forums at sites like Orkut also had people revealing questions outright or posting clear hints that are difficult to miss.
Now, it has become fairly obvious to all the aspirants that questions have not only repeated from Day 1 and Day 2, but also from previous years’ question papers, which are freely available.
Questions repeat
The R&D Director at Career Launcher, K Shivakumar vouched for the fact that questions have been repeated from previous years. In fact, his organisation has even texted their students to revise specific question papers from previous years.
“I have been personally sitting for the test for the past six years and I can safely say that several questions have been repeated,” he said.
However, Shivakumar also added that it was strange and rare for questions to be repeated in CAT. “It has happened in the past but on very rare occasions. But this is strange and is not something that you would normally associate with CAT,” he said.
But more significantly, Shivakumar said that according to the feedback from some students, the questions were also repeated from across slots. “Students have told me that there have been questions that have been repeated from across slots. This is possibly due to the fact that they have had to design 20 different sets of questions,” he said.
Early birds lose out?
All these have put a question mark over the fate of students who have managed to take their exams in the first three days. Those taking their exams at a later date are now much wiser for having known the format and in many cases, the questions as well. This emerging pattern is likely to punish those who were able to take their exams in the first 3-4 days.
Making matters worse for some students, is the stressful atmosphere under which they took the exam. A student, who took the exam at CMRIT centre on Monday said that the systems crashed four times before the test, and twice after the test started. While some who could not log on were being assisted by the engineers, others who were able to log on found it difficult to focus in the chaos and people milling around. In many cases, delay for several hours before the test commenced, had students battle hunger, while they attended the test.