Breaking News: Crashing start for CAT 2009

Updated on: Monday, November 30, 2009

THE Common Admission Test (CAT) for MBA, which for the first time has employed an online format, kick-started on a wrong note on Saturday with servers crashing across several test centres. Around 10,000 students had showed up across the country for the first day of the 10-day series of this online test.

The test did not start at the designated time and when it did, a large number of students encountered technical glitches . Each had their own account to share. While for some, the problem began with the system rejecting their password, others reported the screen going blank. Some others had to contend with screens where words appeared but pictures went missing. This was not all. Some students suffered a setback while proceeding with the test, which ended abruptly after they answered three/four questions. Abhinav, a student from PGDAV, said, "My computer hung for 10 minutes and it unnerved me. Even if we are offered a second opportunity, we can never approach it with the same attitude with which we had come prepared."

Prior to the test, academicians and directors of various coaching centres had expressed their apprehensions with the online format. "Students should be introduced to global patterns of examination at the school level itself, rather than in college," said Arindam Lahiri, director, Academics, a CAT coaching centre.

While others attributed the glitches to "inadequate preparation" by those in charge of the online format, Ulhas Vairagkar, director, TIME, added that test organisers did not invest sufficiently in terms of planning the test.

For a country like India, which boasts of its IT prowess, Saturday’s test failure has thrown up uncomfortable and embarrassing questions. However, Soumitra Roy, director, Prometric (one of the test organisers), dismissed it as a case of "isolated technical issues."

Timesofindia

Breaking News: Crashing start for CAT 2009

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