CAT 2012@ Diary of a candidate who took Day 1, slot 1 of CAT 2012

(prHWY.com) October 13, 2012 - Noida, India -- As per the guidelines by IIMs and Prometric, I made it a point to reach the test center sharp on time. After reaching the venue, I was surprised by the absence of usual hustle and bustle of test takers outside the exam hall. I was allowed to go inside the building after the security official at the main gate checked my admit card and identity prove. A small queue of barely five people was formed and the same documents were being checked by the Prometric official.

8.45 AM - Second round of security checks

After entering the institute, the second round of checking was done. Here, not only my admit card and photo ID were checked, but I was frisked thoroughly. My personal stuffs like wallet, watch, mobile phone, etc. were stored in a small plastic bag and I was given a token against it.
9 AM - The wait and the observations

The Prometric officials showed us the way to the waiting area. My eyes searched for some fellow CAT takers but it looked like the number of test center officials were more than candidates.
9.10 AM - The biometric checking process

I was ushered to the next room for the biometric checking. I was asked to stand in front of the camera. The next step was to give my finger print. I kept the right and left index fingers on the small machine resembling the mouse of a computer, with a hollow made for the index finger to fit.
9.15 AM - Entering the test lab

After I entered the lab and sat, there was another round of long wait as we were 45 minutes to go before the exam was scheduled.

I read and re-read the rules and guidelines by Prometric lying on the desk. I saw the person sitting next to me dozing off and the other person roaming around inside the lab. There was a clear instruction not to click on anything or talk to the fellow test takers.
After going back to the lab, I observed that there were just seven candidates including me. This was indeed a surprise. The first day usually sees lesser number of candidates, I have never heard of such a thin number.
10 AM - The test starts

The curtain raised sharp at 10 am with agreeing to the non-disclosure Agreement. The first section was quantitative ability & data interpretation. The officials distributed the scratch sheets for rough work with a pair of pencils and eraser. Surprisingly, this year, we were not instructed to write the CAT serial number on each of the pages unlike the last years. Seventy minutes seemed too less for the tricky QA questions and calculation-intensive DI questions. I realized that I have not marked the questions which I completed. While reviewing the questions, I was only allowed to go back to the incomplete questions and the marked questions. I regretted not knowing the fact as I could not revise the questions which I have attempted. I took a mental note of not repeating the same mistake in the next section.

The verbal ability & logical reasoning section was like a breeze compared to the previous section. The questions were not very easy but at least they were attemptable and I was quite confident of most of the questions I answered.

12.20 PM - Here ends the test

Exactly after 140 minutes, the exam ended. The timer stopped and the exam window in the computer automatically exited. The paper was moderately difficult, I thought to myself, much on the lines of the last year's exam apart from a few tricky ones. The candidates who had already completed started leaving the lab. Unlike last couple of years, the invigilators collected the scratch sheets after everybody left the lab and not before that. However, we were not allowed to leave the test center immediately. After around five minutes of wait, we were finally led towards the exit.

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