Prometric, which is entrusted with the task of conducting CAT, has designed the test paper to provide a comprehensive overview of what to expect on the day of the examination for admissions to Indian Institutes of Management.

“The practice test will be available on www.catiim.in in about a couple of weeks to familiarise candidates with the navigation and functionality of the CAT,” Managing Director of Prometric India, Soumitra Roy, said here on Wednesday.

The agency drew flak due to severe hiccups during the last online CAT, as many of the candidates could not appear for the test due to technical glitches. CAT 2009, held for the first time in online format, was later rescheduled.

Referring to the practice test paper, Roy said there would be a tutorial followed by 12 sample questions in the practice test and candidates could take it as many times as they wish. The sample questions in the practice test would, however, not be representative of the content or difficulty level of the actual test, he said.

“We came across several candidates last year who had some difficulty in handling the online mode of the CAT test due to lack of exposure,” he said, while highlighting the need for the practice test. He said the practice test was designed with relevant inputs from the IIMs.

The tutorial will explain features like navigation around the screen, question number, on-screen timer, next button, previous button, mark button, review button and quit test button.

The CAT 2010 online test will be conducted in a staggered format starting from October 27 and ending on November 24. The last date for registration for the test is September 30.

Assuring that CAT 2010 will be free of glitches and problems that had been encountered last year, Roy said they had even ensured back-ups in case of any hitch.

Roy said they were preparing 147 labs across 78 centres to conduct the CAT test. “The guarantee is that we will test the candidates within the testing window period,” he said.

He said a set of videos had also been uploaded in youtube for the benefit of candidates. The videos contain registration and scheduling, test day procedure, test format and CAT scoring process among others.