This was a CATastrophy

Updated on: Monday, December 14, 2009

Over the last decade CAT or the Common Admission Test, has taken on many avatars. But in essence it has always been an aptitude test of managerial acumen. However the last online avatar of CAT was a real disaster as India’s most demanding, premier exam was reduced to a farce.

The CAT committee issued a disclaimer this year for all MBA aspirants appearing for the examination that they would have to agree to a Non-Disclosure Agreement at the time of the test, reports IANS. But what disclosure could the students make apart from the fact that the servers kept crashing and technical glitches kept affecting more than 49 test centres across 14 cities in India?

An exam for admission to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), the Prometric website posted a notice which stated: “The launch of the computerised CAT involved the delivery of exams by Prometric into more than 360 testing labs at 104 individual locations. While a significant majority of the candidates successfully completed their exams on Day One, various technical issues arose at selected computers in approximately 50 labs that prevented approximately 2,000 exams from being delivered. Prometric has generated new appointments for these individuals and they are in the process of being contacted through SMS and email messages. Prometric technicians have been dispatched to address these isolated problems…”
However, despite the rescheduling many students were not able to take their exams. “Students at Delhi, Bhopal and Lucknow called us saying they could not give the exam. Many of them are rescheduled candidates,” said Ulhas Vairagkar, Director, TIME coaching institute.

Candidates said they faced a harrowing time, coming to the re-alloted centres time and again with no guarantee that they would be able to take the test.

IANS reports Gautam Puri, VC of Career Launcher, a coaching institute as saying, “The students are now trying not to get bogged down by the system failure. They are concerned over the integrity of the CAT and whether the answers to questions they attempted would be fairly assessed by the system that has failed on many counts.”

According to a spokesperson at TIME, Nidhi Popli’s (3rd December, 3.30 pm slot, Delhi) test ended in a minute as she clicked “End Test” by mistake on the instruction of the invigilator. Aloka Samal (1st December, 10 am slot, Delhi) had to finish her exam before time as the timer on the screen was faulty and question numbering was missing.

Prometric alleged that the “viruses and malware that attacked the test delivery system were not detected by the anti-virus software at the testing centres”. TIME felt that Prometric’s claim of there being a virus that was “not detected by the anti-virus software at the testing centres” was difficult to accept. Also, it failed to address the very real issues of under-trained staff and inadequate infrastructure. “We believe that several steps could have been taken to avoid some of the problems faced. For instance conducting a “dress rehearsal” before the day of the actual CAT would have shown flaws in the system straight away,” said a spokesperson from the coaching institute, adding, “If one is using existing, outsourced infrastructure (computers) to conduct the exam, formatting the systems (deleting everything from the computer) and loading ONLY the operating system and the CAT software would have prevented the so-called virus attack.”

Meanwhile, the CAT committee stressed that its role in administering the exam was restricted to preparing questions. “We recognise the difficulty that aspirants had to go through and empathise with them. Every student who could not take the test because of the glitch will be accommodated,” Samir Barua, Chairman, IIM Directors’ Forum said.

Around 2,40,000 students registered for the computerised CAT this year and as one of them said, “I am wondering if the results would be fair… after all the system has been failing even during our exams.”

And with protests growing, and students demanding a retest with pen and paper, the end game looks nowhere in sight.

This was a CATastrophy

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