CAT RESULTS : 10 Candidates from Telangana scored 100 percentile

Ahmedabad: Ten candidates scored a 100 percentile, while 21 scored a 99.99 percentile in the Common Admission Test (CAT) 2019, the results of which were announced on Saturday.

The CAT, considered a gateway into the 20 Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and over 100 other top B-schools, was held in November 2019, across 376 test centres in 156 cities.

However, despite a relatively easier test paper with a pattern aimed at providing a level playing field to candidates from other disciplines, all 10 candidates scoring 100 percentile in 2019 are from engineering or technology backgrounds.

According to an communique from IIM Kozhikode that organised CAT 2019, of the 10 candidates who scored 100 percentile - all males, six are from IITs, two are from NITs, and one is from Jadavpur University.

Moreover, four out of these 10 candi­dates are from Ma­h­ara­shtra and the rema­in­ing candidates are from six other states - Jharkhand, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.

On the other hand, among the 21 candidates who scored a 99.99 percentile, 19 have an engineering/technology background.

For instance, Delhi-based Rahul Manglik, one of the 21 candidates, who scored a 99.99 percentile, is a final year student of mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay.

Expressing his gratitude to his teachers, parents and sister for his CAT score, Manglik said that he is hoping to pursue as part of his career a combination of his likes, his abilities and that which is financially viable.

"This year's CAT examination was one of the smoothest exams held in recent years. IIM Kozhikode feels privileged and expresses its gratitude to all stakeholders on behalf of all 20 IIMs for seamless conduct of CAT 2019.

I also take this opportunity to congratulate all successful aspirants and wish them luck for the remaining stages of the exam," said Debashis Chatterjee, director, IIM Kozhikode.

Candidates were allotted exactly 60 minutes for answering questions in each of the three sections without being allowed to switch from one section to another while answering questions in a section.

According to CAT tutorial experts, the restriction in movement across sections during the test made by IIMs is an attempt at making the text agnostic and providing a level playing field for non-engineering candidates.

"IIMs having been trying provide a test paper where engineering or non-engineering stream doesn't matter but a candidate's approach to it.

High level maths questions have been few which is why there have been many candidates from non-engineering background who have also scored very high percentile this year," said Ramnath Kanakadandi, National CAT Course Director, T.I.M.E, one of the leading CAT tutorial centres.

In all, 209,926 candidates appeared in CAT 2019, the highest in last 10 years. Of the total, 134,917 were male candidates, 750,04 were female and 5 were transgender candidates.