HYDERABAD: CAT 2009 seems to be no tough deal for Hyderabad students. Officials of the city-based coaching classes claim that over 50% of the questions in Common Admission Test so far were lifted from their question banks.

‘‘This’s in stark contrast to the previous years where less than 10% questions were familiar even to the above average student. IIMs this year have reproduced questions from coaching material, with just a change in certain figures,’’ said head of a coaching centre that has branches across the country. After a six-day analysis of CAT questions, experts said that a student who had taken mock CATs from at least two coaching centres in the city would get a 100 percentile easily.
“‘On the first day of the test, over 75% questions were found to be similar to what we had prescribed for our students. Out of this, over 50% of the questions were the same as the ones we had prescribed for mock CATs. This is strange, as earlier if even two questions seemed familiar students felt they were really lucky,’’ said IMS coaching centre director A Vamsidhar. Most coaching centres follow similar questions patterns, developed by IIMs graduates and expert educationists.

While this might seem to be a good sign for the first time test taker, the more experienced ones sense the hidden danger of cut offs shooting through the roof.

“CAT has come down to the standards of ICET which is a state level MBA examination. While in the previous years, clearing 30 to 45% of the questions would mean a sure IIM call, this year, even those who had cleared over 70% might not get a call,’’ veteran test taker T Nageswar Rao said.

Officials of another coaching institute from the city said that the IIMs had picked up questions from some of the cheap reading material on CAT. “There are CAT coaching guides from which questions were picked up without even changing the measurements. Even a below average student who can mug up the questions can score well in CAT this year,” he said.

Representatives of another coaching centre — Career Launcher — said that some of their questions have made it to CAT 2009. “Students told us that questions with just change in figures were introduced,” said Career Launcher director Naresh Reddy.

Experts say IIMs should now ideally calculate percentile of each student based on the number of test takers on that day as the difficulty level of the test has been varying each day.

Many say CAT has become a game of luck. ‘‘One will no longer be able to say that IIMs have the cream. Bright students who are making silly mistakes will be the only ones who might not qualify CAT this year, while the average ones will,’’ Vamsidhar said.

source: TOI