Around 10,000 students in the city will take the first paperless Common Admission Test (CAT) for Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) that commences on Saturday. This time, the examination will be computer-based and spread over 10 days of two sessions each.

Around 2.5 lakh students are appearing across the country. The exam will be held at four centres in Pune and Pimpri. The College of Engineering, Pune, Padmashree Dr D Y Patil Institute of Engineering and Technology, Sant Tukaramnagar, Pimpri, Pimpri Chinchwad College of Engineering, Nigdi and Sinhagad College of Engineering, Wadgaon Budruk.  

In a bid to maintain secrecy, there will be 20 different sets of question papers of the same level of difficulty to be answered in 20 sessions.

There is no printed question paper. Everything will be on computer. Until last year, students used answersheets to solve CAT papers and the examination was over in a single day. There will be two sessions each day from November 28 to December 7. The morning session will be from 10 am to 12.30 pm and the afternoon session from 3.30 pm to 6 pm. The questions will cover three sections — quantitative aptitude (mathematics), reasoning and English.

“This time, students will be required to answer papers on computer which is a skilled task by itself,” said T G Param, director of one of the institutes to coach CAT aspirants.

Many aspirants from Pune have in the past complained of never getting exam centres in the city and had to go to Mumbai. “As the exam is computer-based this year, it requires a lot of infrastructure. As the four centres in the city have limited capacity, many students from Pune who registered late for CAT had to choose other centres in the country,” said an official involved with the preparation for CAT in the city.