Pathik Shah

CAT 2009 has been mired in controversy since Day 1. While Day 1 was mainly in the news because of the widespread failure of the computers resulting in many students not being able to give the test, from the second day onwards, many other issues challenging the fairness and sanctity of the CAT have been brought to light.

Here are some of the issues which most of the mainstream media has ignored so far – they haven’t talked about anything except VIRUS problems so far.

1. Questions repeating across slots.

This puts the students giving the exam at a later date at an advantage over those who gave it earlier. More than 5-6 questions have reportedly been repeated in different slots. Considering a marking scheme of +3/-1, this makes a difference of 15-18 marks between students of different slots while also giving the students at a later slot more time to solve other questions and scoring even more.

2. Questions (Figures and Diagrams) not appearing properly.

Some figures / charts in the DI and Quant sections don’t appear properly for some students. Except or noting down the numbers of the students, the Prometric officials have done nothing else. How they plan to award marks in such cases is a very contentious issue.

3. Questions being leaked by various channels (Orkut, Coaching Classes, Friends)

Despite the (NDA) non-disclosure agreement, there is no way to check if questions are being leaked by students who already gave the tests or not. Even if the questions weren’t repeating, this would offer a significant advantage to the students taking the test at a later date as there wouldn’t be the same element of surprise as there was for the first day students as they would already know the format and the general trend. Many coaching classes have also provided their students with questions from the previous slots.

4. Students getting extra / less time

There are some students who got less time than the stipulated 2.15 hrs due to system failure. On the other hand, many students have gotten anywhere between 15-45 minutes extra if their system had to be restarted in between, giving them extra time to solve more problems. Even the difference of a minute can mean a difference of several marks, and ultimately a seat in a good college in a highly competitive exam like the CAT. There have also been reports of students deliberately restarting their machines to gain extra time.

5. Varying difficulty levels across slots

There have been varying difficulty levels across different slots. There is no news yet on the normalization process (if any) to be used. This, added to the other problems will definitely lead to a lot of controversy when the result comes out.

Other Problems:

Besides these, there are many other problems like

- Many students whose slots had been rescheduled due to system failure or other reasons haven’t been able to give the test even after 3-4 days. Also as the maximum traffic is concentrated around the last three days, there are bound to be many more glitches then. Also, if the window extends beyond 9th Dec, many engineering students from Mumbai wouldn’t be able to take the test as semester exams will have started.

There also have been some reports of mass copying and deliberate restarting of PCs to gain extra time which haven’t been confirmed.

Non Issues some seem to be concerned about -

- Paper being easier

If it’s easier, it’s easier for everyone (atleast it should have been, see point 5). So there should be no difference in the relative percentile scores of different candidates.

- Computer Based Test

CAT, going the CBT way may be the right thing to do, only if the infrastructure exists to support such a transition. No one should complain that it’s a CBT if it is fair and carried out without glitches (which doesn’t seem to be possible in India, as of now).

The way out -

The only way out seems to be a retest. And since they can’t seem to manage a CBT, it has to be a paper-pencil based one. If they act fast, they can do one in Jan-Feb. This doesn’t seem likely but seems to be the only right way out of this mess. Also, I’m hopeful that they must have had atleast some condition or clause in the $40 mn contract they awarded to Prometric which would lead to termination of the contract if Prometric fails to deliver (which it has, so far).

I’ll keep updating this article if there are any new developments. Leave a comment below if you have something to say.

Important Articles -

TIME – Open Letter to the IIMs

Career Launcher’s Letter to the IIMs

PagalGuy on the Paper Retest option

If there was a problem during your CAT test, you can post it here -

PagalGuy – CAT Problems