CMAT centre at YMT Kharghar, Navi Mumbai (Photo: Ushnota Paul)

Already labelled the easiest management entrance exam three days into the test, the Common Management Aptitude Test (CMAT) is inviting mixed reactions from test-takers in Delhi and Mumbai, ranging from delight to distress.

According to candidates both at Delhi and Mumbai, the exam content was easy and the experience smooth due to the presence of good invigilation in their respective centres. “The exam was managed rather well, the authorities made us very comfortable and the instructions given to us were lucid,” Nikita Patki, a final-year BE student at Vidyalankar College, Mumbai, who had her centre at Khalsa College in Matunga area.

Candidates who came to take the test at Era Business School in Dwarka (New Delhi) were offered tea and coffee to help them relax their minds after a gruelling exam’. Ankit Kumar, one of the test takers at the school said that he had appeared for all the management tests for this year and this was the first time a centre had been so generous. It was unexpected, but when the college authorities told us that we could have refreshments in their canteen to relax our minds, it felt kind of nice, he told PaGaLGuY.

Ankit Shah, a BE final-year student who had appeared for his test at Khalsa College in Mumbai’s Matunga said that at his centre, a couple of candidates had pushed the start button of the computer-based exam before official instructions were issued. However, this was immediately noticed by the invigilators on the spot and action was taken, he said. The candidates were stopped from beginning their test early and were instructed to wait till instructions were issued.

On the other hand, some aspirants had a different story to tell. Rohit Shelar, a final year BBA student had come all the way from Nashik to write the CMAT at the YMT Management College, Navi Mumbai, since there were no CMAT centres in Nashik. He too said that the paper at his centre had started late. It was supposed to start at 9.30 am, but it started at 10 am. In addition, the network link of some computers was also getting frequently disconnected and causing inconvenience to the candidates, he told PaGaLGuY.

Another student who complained about the test infrastructure was Umez Khan, who wrote the CMAT paper in one of the Navi Mumbai centres. According to him, not only did the exam at his centre start late, but constant interruptions by the staff at the centre asking the candidates to hurry up and finish the exam made for a lot of disturbance. In the last ten minutes of the paper, some invigilators actually came and sat beside us in order to make us hurry up and finish the test, so that the second slot could start on time. This really distracted a lot of us, he said.

Candidates at both Mumbai and Delhi were unanimous that the days question papers did not have any mistakes. But Prachi Verma, a software engineer said, “There were a few grammatical and printing errors in the quant section. Words like ‘are’ were missing from sentences, which made it difficult to comprehend the question statement correctly,” she said.

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