Decision on online CAT after Dec 7: IIMs

Updated on: Friday, December 04, 2009

Kolkata: The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are now collating all relevant data on how the technical glitches happened in the online Common Admission Test (CAT) this year and would take a decision once the staggered exam is over by December 7, an official of the premier B-school said.

“Right now, we’re all aware of the problem. We can’t take any decision on what is to be done. We’ll have to go through the whole process and will collect all information from Prometric on what exactly went wrong in the system,” IIM-Calcutta director Shekhar Chowdhury told reporters.

US firm Prometric was awarded a $40-million contract by the IIMs to switch the highly competitive CAT from the paper-based version to online system.

“We’ve already ordered a full-fledged enquiry into the entire issue. Prometric will provide us with full information on the technical glitches. We’ll also talk to Management Information System (MIS) people to know the actual problem,” Chowdhury said.

However, Prometric has alleged that “viruses and malware that attacked the test delivery system were not detected by the anti-virus software at the testing centres”.

CAT determines admission to country’s prestigious IIMs and many other B-schools and it went online for the first time this year.

The examination process was largely hit by technical problems and poor management affecting thousands of students in many test centres in 13 cities across the country.

Around 240,000 students had registered for the CAT this year, which is scheduled at 105 centres in 32 cities, all linked to a main server.

Decision on online CAT after Dec 7: IIMs

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