The following article has been written by a PaGaLGuY user who describes his CMAT 2016 experience.
CMAT examination was conducted on 17th
January 2016. I was one of the hopeful aspirants attempting the exam. Let me
share my CMAT 2016 experience with all of you.
Journey
to the Examination Centre:
When my CMAT hall ticket was issued, I was appalled when I saw my exam centre as D Y Patil MBA College in Pune. As I
reside in Mumbai and had also selected Mumbai as my examination centre and also
I had registered early, so this was a sudden shock to me.
I tried calling the CMAT authorities and
even mailed them twice to explain my predicament. But it was to no avail, as I
got no response from them.
I was in two minds whether to skip CMAT or
not this year. In the end, I mustered some courage and thought I would give it a
try. I googled my exam centre and saw that it was around 10 min walk from Akurdi
local railway station in Pune. I devised a travel plan and so my journey began
when I boarded a 2 am bus from Mumbai to Pune. My plan was to have my sleep in the Mumbai – Pune bus, reach there by 6.00 am in the morning and reach my centre by
7.00. My reporting time was 8 am and exam time was 9.30 am.
Alas, I forgot it is often said that, “Want
to make god laugh, tell him your plans!” Forget about sleeping, the rough
terrain of the Mumbai to Pune route made sure that I don’t even get a minute
of peace while sitting! And the “Michael Schumacher” driver of my bus made me reach
by 5.00 am in the morning.
After having a light breakfast, I took the
Pune local to leave for Akurdi station where my centre was supposed to be, or
was it? I reached Akurdi station at around 6.30. My centre D Y patil was about
10 minutes distance from the station; so I thought I’ll wait for half an hour at
the station itself and then leave. So, as planned, I reached the D Y Patil MBA
Akurdi branch at around 7.30 – no one was around except for two elderly
caretakers. I told them I have come all the way from Mumbai for this
examination, so they let me in.
As I let myself in, I heard them talking
amongst themselves as why don’t the authorities tell us anything! We don’t even
know there is an examination today! This made me suspicious but I overlooked
that. It was nearly 8 o’clock still no one came. I went to the care taker and
showed him my hall ticket; he glanced at my hall ticket and to my horror told
me that I was in the wrong branch of DY Patil. My centre was supposed to be in
Talegoan which was around 1 hour distance from Akurdi! I ran like hell and
caught a local from Akurdi to Talegaon station from where I had to take a six
seater tempo to reach my examination centre. After some more minor hiccups I
finally reached my examination centre by 9.25 am. They let me in when I
explained my scenario to them.
The
CMAT Exam:
Here is the bifurcation of the various
sections of CMAT:
GK: This section contained all the
questions based on static GK with 2-3 questions based on pictorial GK
questions.
English: This section was Easy to Moderate
with one RC being Difficult. Also, emphasis was on idioms and phrases.
Quants:
The focus in quants was in Arithmetic
questions and a few based on modern maths. There were also 3-4 individual DI questions of easy to
moderate level.
LR: Most questions in this section were on
arrangements; 5-6 questions were on team formation and one visual reasoning
question.
Overall, the paper was of easy to moderate
level.
The return journey:
As my exam ended and I interacted with
fellow students it came to my notice that all the students in this far away Pune
centre were from Mumbai itself. The return journey was not as troublesome as I
had fellow students with me travelling back to Mumbai.
I don’t know what the issue was with the
CMAT authorities that the centre was such a goof-up. Even the hall ticket issue
date was postponed twice and later sent to students’ email ids. The concerned
authorities should look into this and make sure such a fiasco does not recur and cause trouble to aspiring MBA students.
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