CAT 2014 exam updates: 10 Big changes in this year CAT 2014 exam

Moving away from the past years, CAT 2014 exam notification has brought many surprises and changes in its process of registration, selection of test centre, duration of test, pattern of test &declaration of result.

Moving away from the past years, CAT 2014 notification has brought many surprises and changes in its process of registration, selection of test centre, conduct of test, duration of test, pattern of test and declaration of result. MBAUniverse.com had already anticipated many changes and surprises in CAT 2014, with the change of guard in testing agency from Prometric to TCS and has been advising the aspirants in this regard from time to time.

Appended are the 10 Big changes that will happen in CAT 2014

1. CAT 2014 will be a month late

CAT has the history of being conducted prominently in the month of October every year till 2013. CAT 2014 has been scheduled to be held in the month of November 2014.

2. Only 2 days CAT instead of 21 days

CAT 2014 will be conducted in a 2 day testing window on November 16 & November 22, 2014 in 4 sessions of morning and afternoon instead of 21 days and 42 sessions testing window that took place in CAT 2013. Will TCS be able to manage 2 lakhs of candidates in 2 days, remains to be seen?

3. More Testing cities and sites

CAT 2014 is proposed to be held in 99 cities at 354 testing sites as against 40 testing cities with 76 testing sites. Higher number of centers and cities have been planned to cope with the high number of CAT 2014 aspirants who are expected to take CAT 2014 in 2 days across the country.

4. No Off-line vouchers purchase in CAT 2014

CAT 2014 is poised not to offer the facility of purchasing the off-line vouchers. All the CAT 2014 aspirants shall have to register themselves on line wef August 6 to September 30, 2014 by paying requisite registration fee on-line only. In CAT 2013 dual facility of registration off-line as well as on-line was available.

5. No facility to finalize the Testing centre, date and session with Registration

CAT 2014 aspirants cannot schedule their test on the preferred date nor can they finalize their choice of centre and session at the time of on-line Registration and filling up the application. This big facility was available till CAT 2013 but has been done away with in CAT 2014.  Now the CAT aspirants have to select 3 preferred test cities (Not testing centres) at the time of Registration.

Out of these 3 chosen test cities the aspirant will be allotted one of the cities along with testing centre and session on random basis as per the availability after the last date for registration i.e. September 30, 2014 by the testing agency.  So the choice is no more in the hands of the aspirant.  Besides any of the 4 sessions can be allotted, so the facility of choosing the preferred session has also been withdrawn.

Keep a check for LIVE Updates on CAT 2014 Exam, Click here: CAT 2014 Exam Notification Details

6. Late Issue of Admit Card in CAT 2014

Admit cards, your permission to appear in CAT 2014 will be available on or after October 16, 2014, the date that is falling after 16 days of last date of registration.  So whether you register yourself on August 6 or September 30, 2014, you are at par with other aspirants and as such till October 16, 2014 you won’t have access to your admit card which will also have the details of your test date, test city, session and centre. Till CAT 2013 aspirants could download their admit cards 24 hrs after completion of registration.

7. CAT 2014 will have more questions and time to solve

According to the sources CAT 2014 proposes to increase number of testing questions from 30 in CAT 2013 to 50 in each section. It means total number of questions in both the sections taken together will be 100 since CAT is divided in 2 sections vis. Quant & DI; Verbal & LR.

With the increase in number of questions, time to solve CAT 2014 is also proposed to be increased from 140 minutes to 170 minutes i.e. 85 minutes per section.

8. CAT 2014; test to offer facility of moving to & fro in 2 sections

According to the sources, a great facility of navigation between the 2 test sections in CAT 2014 is proposed to be provided to the aspirants by the test convening IIM Indore. Till CAT 2013 candidates could not go to 2nd section of Verbal prior to completion of 70 minutes allotted to solve the 1st section of Quant nor could they come back to 1st section once they had switched over to 2nd section.

In CAT 2014 aspirants would be allowed to move from one section to another (forward-backward) during the testing duration of 170 minutes without any restriction.

9. No advance tutorial in testing room

The 15 minutes advance tutorial on testing pattern which used to be available till CAT 2013, will be missing in CAT 2014.  All the CAT 2014 aspirants should practice the practice test available on CAT 2014 site, well in advance and before the testing day, to make them conversant with the testing pattern and type of questions, number of options and their answering pattern.

10. Early declaration of result

Although CAT 2014 is proposed to be held a month late on November 16 & 22, 2014 in contrast to CAT 2013 that began on October 16, 2013, the results for CAT 2014, however will be declared in the 3rd week of December 2014 a month earlier than the CAT 2013 results which were declared on January 14, 2014.

It appears that IIMs and testing partner TCS have planned to put CAT 2014 on a faster track in view of its earlier delayed process when Prometric was the testing partner of IIMs.

For Latest updates on CAT 2014 exam Registration, keep a check on the below link for LIVE Updates: CAT 2014 Exam Notification Details