First day, first show: 'CAT 2011 wasn't great'

Rediff.com's Divya Nair visited the Institute of Business Studies and Research, IBSAR, centre at Belapur on the first day of CAT 2011 and spoke to students to find out how the first day went by. While most students do not prefer to take the CAT on the first day, we spoke to some students who braved it on the D-Day.

Interestingly, the shadow of non-disclosure agreement loomed large as some students refused to speak anything about the exam. They were scared after some newspapers reported that the convener's of CAT threatened students with imprisonment and fine of Rs 2 lakh for discussing CAT papers.

Yogesh Anil, 24, who works as a marketing manager with Ranbaxy at Andheri says the exam didn't go too well for him. "I had not prepared well," he says.

Yogesh has completed his graduation in Pharmacy from Oriental College of Pharmacy and plans to do his MBA so that he can help his father in the family's polymer business. "I want to learn about entrepreneurship. That's why I want to do my MBA," he reasoned.

Yogesh's father owns Trimurti Polymers in Jalgaon, Maharashtra.

Reader invite:

So, how was your first day of CAT? Were you nervous? Did you reach on time? Did you face any problems at the test centre? Did you manage to crack all the questions? Share your CAT experience with us. Write in to getahead@rediff.co.in with the subject line 'My CAT experience' along with your picture. We will publish the best entries in rediff.com. Keep watching this space for updates.

20-year-old Manasi Kirtane is a resident of Ahmednagar district in Maharashtra. She travelled about 300 kilometres from home to reach the Belapur centre as this was the only convenient location for the centre. Mansi who is a final year commerce student from Sarda College, Ahmednagar was accompanied by her father Meherram Kirtane who works at Toyota in Ahmednagar.

"We started from home yesterday at 11pm and reached here at 5.30 pm. Fortunately, we have relatives here in Mumbai, otherwise we may have had to book a hotel for accommodation. We had to travel 300 kms to reach here. The journey was quite taxing for us," voiced Kirtane, the father.

There are no CAT centres in Ahmednagar or Shirdi, nor are there any coaching centres to guide students about their career, he added.   

While other students walked out of the centre by 12.30, Kirtane waited anxiously for his daughter till 12.45 when she walked up to him and said, "The exam wasn't great."

While Kirtane quickly introduced his daughter to me, she narrated how she was among the 17 of them in her room, who faced problems while logging into their computers.

"The systems were all ready to use, but as soon as we entered the password, it showed an error. Besides me, there were 16 others in my room who faced the same problem. We complained to the authorities and they immediately attended to us. But the whole process took us half an hour to start. While other students started the exam at 10 am, we could only resume at 10.30 am. That's why I came out late," she explained.

Mansi expressed her concern about there being limited access to test material for students in Ahmednagar. "We don't have any training institutes. I was lucky that my brother informed me about CAT exam. Otherwise, I would have nothing else to do after graduation."

Reader invite:

So, how was your first day of CAT? Were you nervous? Did you reach on time? Did you face any problems at the test centre? Did you manage to crack all the questions? Share your CAT experience with us. Write in to getahead@rediff.co.in with the subject line 'My CAT experience' along with your picture. We will publish the best entries in rediff.com. Keep watching this space for updates.

Varsha S Nair, a final year graduate student of accounting and finance from Model College Dombivli says she wasn't very happy with her performance either.

'I am weak in mathematics. That's why I found the Quant section too difficult. The verbal section was easy. But I really don't know how much I will score," she shared.

Varsha says she wants to pursue her MBA in a good college but is now apprehensive about her scores. "Right now, I don't know if I will get into a good college. Since there is negative marking, I am not expecting much. I shall concentrate on studying and preparing myself better for the next exam," added the 20-year-old.

She could not speak much as she had to rush home, which required her to travel another hour and half. "Yes, the test centre is really far. But all other centres are equally far," she confessed when her father interrupted the conversation reminding us that they had to return home soon.

Meanwhile close to five students refused to talk since they were worried about the 'Non Disclosure Agreement.

"Please don't ask me any questions," requested Aniket who refused to share any details about his experience.  "We cannot talk about the exam or anything related to it. Please excuse me. I am sorry," he said.

Reader invite:

So, how was your first day of CAT? Were you nervous? Did you reach on time? Did you face any problems at the test centre? Did you manage to crack all the questions? Share your CAT experience with us. Write in to getahead@rediff.co.in with the subject line 'My CAT experience' along with your picture. We will publish the best entries in rediff.com. Keep watching this space for updates.

I will not tell you anything about the exam. But if you ask me, I don't think I will score anything better than my last attempt where I scored about 65 percent. It's difficult to study while you are also working. I have been giving the exam three times and my performance hasn't been any better," said Rajesh, 25, who works at a leading infotech company in MHAPE, Mumbai,  carefully choosing his words not to divulge any information related to the exam whatsoever.

"I would prefer you don't provide any details of mine. Also, please don't click my picture. I don't want to invite any trouble," he requested further.

Reader invite:

So, how was your first day of CAT? Were you nervous? Did you reach on time? Did you face any problems at the test centre? Did you manage to crack all the questions? Share your CAT experience with us. Write in to getahead@rediff.co.in with the subject line 'My CAT experience' along with your picture. We will publish the best entries in rediff.com. Keep watching this space for updates.