On 26th November, 2014, we interviewed Mr. Gautam Puri, Vice Chairman & MD, CL Educate Ltd. (a CAT Subject Matter expert) and discussed the CAT 2014 question patterns and level of difficulty and get useful tips for 2015. Given below is the transcript of the interview.
CL Educate Ltd.: CL Educate Ltd is Asia’s one of the most prestigious edu-corporates, with focus on diverse segments of education and across learners of multiple age-groups. Established with a passion for excellence in education and led by a team of IIT-IIM alumni, CL Educate Ltd has shaped the lives and careers of lakhs of students in the last 18 years.
The establishment’s core ideologies are focused on academic excellence, technological innovation, and deep rooted domain expertise built over close to two decades. Within 18 years of its existence, the CL brand has become a household name in India. It operates across a broad spectrum of segments including test preparation, K-12 education and vocational training. Its core value is to ‘enable individuals to realize their potential and achieve their dreams’.
The company has state-of-the-art infrastructure spread across 225 learning centers over 175 locations in India. It has a strong 3000+ team of teachers, trainers and academicians, who are committed to deliver path breaking education across various segments. Outside India, it has learning centers in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
Mr. Gautam Puri, Vice Chairman & MD, CL Educate Ltd.: Mr. Gautam Puri, Vice Chairman & MD of CL Educate Ltd. has joined Career Launcher in its formative years in 1996. He has been instrumental in creating CL’s unique courseware and delivery methods along with the company’s rapid expansion. He has been in the education field for almost two decades now and brings his in-depth knowledge, expertise and understanding of various competitive entrance exams including CAT.
1. How was the recently conducted CAT 2014 different from last year?
Apart from the structural changes, CAT 2014 paper has been the easiest in the last 20 odd years. Quantitative Aptitude were extremely easy, most of the Reading Comprehension were short passages & factual in nature and easy to read (most of them). The difficult portion in the paper was the Logical Reasoning section and to some extent Data Interpretation. Overall, difficulty level of the paper was so low that for the first time we found students are attempting almost 50 questions and a few completing the entire paper. This is probably is the biggest factor this year in terms of the change.
Compared to last few years’ CAT question papers, this year paper was pretty much easier (than anyone could have expected!).
2. What are the challenges students might have faced in the new CAT format?
Actually there weren’t any challenges in the new CAT format. The tutorial which was released earlier was very clear. I don’t think there was any specific challenges. However, few students have complained about their questions not getting recorded e.g. out of 35 questions they have attempted only 30 questions got recorded. While there have been few issues which have come out, by and large, the platform was not a problem in 2014 CAT paper.
3. What advice you would give students who are to take up the exam in 2015?
Due to change in the exam pattern, CAT 2014 paper was easy incidentally. However, students should not get carried away by looking at this year’s paper, as it has been one of the easiest CAT papers in the last 20 years. Rather, they should continue preparing for 2015 CAT exam, as they usually would do by giving serious attention to the Quant, English and the other sections. Generally, an easy paper is always followed by a difficult paper. So students should prepare for the CAT 2015 on a serious note.
4. Is the new CAT pattern more effective than the previous one?
Clearly in terms of the pattern, surely there was no problem last year and even this year. Whenever a new pattern is introduced, there would be students who would like it and others who won’t. Students by and large will go with the pattern and majority of the students wouldn’t have an issue with the pattern. But purely from the testing perspective, this year’s pattern is better as it allows a student to move between sections which means an intelligent student can manage his/her time better. And once students get into a work-life environment, they would be expected to do time management.
It is a better pattern, because it helps a student develop their time management skill. Secondly, with a larger number of questions, students can test out in a greater detail. Till last year, it had only 60 questions which means the no. of questions was very low so the level of difficulty had to be kept very high (it was almost a knowledge-based paper). This year with the number of questions increased they could have play around with the difficulty level that it came out with an entirely easy paper (incidentally). Typically such a paper is preferred, because with 100 questions you can focus on different level of expertise, larger no. of questions and also you can ensure to cover all areas. With only 30 questions in each section last year, it wouldn’t have really covered all areas.
5. Any specific tips you would like to give students for the CAT Quant section?
Generally, people tend to take Quant as an extremely difficult paper. But they need to remember, it is only a 10th standard mathematics. If you are looking at CAT 2015, and students are not sure of their strength in the area, they can get clarity on fundamental concepts of 9th and 10th standards. Secondly, they need to start practicing as much as possible on MCQ because it is picking up the choices which can help students to get to the right answer and waste less time!
Once the fundamental concepts are clear, they can pick up study materials from any reputed coaching institutes. The problems with most of the books available in the market is they get outdated very fast, as they don’t incorporate the changes in the paper. To ensure that students have the right kind of questions and right level of difficulty, it is best to pick up study materials from CL or any other players who keep on updating their study materials. Getting the right study material is very critical to clear the exam successfully.
6. How Career Launcher helps CAT aspirants?
We give a lot of support to student in terms of online materials. Not only can a student do the entire course online, there is also significant amount of practice material made available online. Also, in addition to the regular online classes, we keep updating on what students need to do with each and every paper. We help them to identify which are the easier questions they need to focus on more in the test. When students know how to tackle a test with good strategies, they stand a better chance to score higher even with less knowledge. In addition, we have large number of online tools e.g. Percentile Predictor, which help them to screening time in the paper.
The online study materials are also available to students who have taken the classroom program. There is also an entirely online CAT program.
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