‘Staff had no clue how to start and end the test’

Candidates were left fuming when the first online Common Admission Test 2009 (CAT 2009) was first delayed and later cancelled at certain test centres due to technical snags.

“I came to the city to write CAT. Now that it’s been cancelled, I’m not sure how long I should stay here. The college authorities just told us that Prometric will send SMSes and mails informing us about the next slot available. When that will be, is not known. The uncertainty is stressful,” said Anjal Deep, a candidate whose test at the Garden City College (GCC), Bangalore got cancelled. 

Candidates were furious about the unprofessional conduct of the CAT organisers. Anurag B, a candidate who was unable to sit for CAT 2009 at GCC said, “Why do they want to go online if they are not equipped to handle it?”

CAT exams are being conducted online by the IIMs in association with Prometric, which also conducts other major exams like GMAT. Soumitra Roy, managing director of Prometric, however, denied that CAT 2009 had been cancelled in any centre. “In fact, thousands of tests were successfully delivered in test centres across India. To accommodate the maximum number of candidates, we delayed the start of the morning session by about half an hour. As a result of isolated technical issues, some candidates are being rescheduled and provided a new appointment through email and SMS,” he said.

Meanwhile in Mumbai, at Saraswati College of Engineering, Kharghar, around 50 students were sent back home due to failure of the server. The Conceicao Rodrigues College Of Engineering, Bandra, saw around 25 students sent back during the morning session and 50 during the afternoon session due to server crashes. However, no information was given to the candidates regarding the rescheduling of the exam. Several candidates were unable to attempt the test due to troubles with passwords and user ID, while several others found their name missing from the centre’s list. “We were kept in the dark for nearly four hours about the cancellation and then sent back home without information about the rescheduled date. said Pranav Khatri (name changed), a resident of Nashik.

Udai Singh, who sat for the test at the LJ Institute of Management Studies, Ahmedabad faced similar problems., “The computer kept bouncing my identification and password. It had to be restarted at least twice and wasted 15 minutes before it accepted the details”.
“It was obvious that they were unprepared and did not have a contingency plan. Most of the staff had no training and were clueless on how to start and end the test. Moreover, there was no mock test conducted before attempting the test,” said Arks Srinivas, Director of Triumphant Institue of Management Education a training centre for CAT aspirants.

The CAT non-starter has called into question the professional judgement made by IIMs. “It is not difficult to have a server which can handle the load of nearly 2.4 lakh candidates. What due diligence has been shown by IIMs in selecting Prometric to handle the computerisation of CAT? Another stupidity was having CAT over a span of 10 days and including a legal non-disclosure agreement. Online tests like GMAT and GRE which are often cited as examples don’t have such legally binding clauses. This means the questions available are limited and could be repeated,” said Samir Kelekar, whose nephew is taking the test.

Inputs from Vineeta Pandey in Delhi, Priya Ramakrishnan in Mumbai, Avnish Tiwari and Jayalakshmi Venugopal in Bangalore, Dayanand Meitei in Ahmedabad and Manasi-Saraf Joshi in Pune