VidYouth

Has CAT become a game of luck? Will IIMs no longer have the cream? For the first time CAT was conducted online where the IIMs had chosen the Prometric ETS to conduct the computer based exam. This change in the pattern, technically called as non adaptive test where the students have to be aware of the basic computer skills which by practice would make the students comfortable to reading, comprehending and answering the questions for 3 hours. CAT 2009 seems to be no tough deal for Hyderabad students. Officials of the city-based coaching classes claim that over 50% of the questions were lifted from their question banks! An expert from a reputed coaching centre also claimed that if the students had given their mock tests regularly getting a 100 percentile is an easy task.

“I am just wondering if the questions I marked are really correct as in many mock exams I wasn’t getting all the answers to the questions but the final CAT I was able to find my answer in the options. I don’t know whether I am right or the option is put to mislead people like me”, says Katie who was half prepared for CAT but wished she prepared well as it turned out to be very easy.

“Another tension apart from exam going online was telangana bandh in the city which left us in a fix whether the exam will be conducted as per schedule as many colleges were closed. But thankfully there wasn’t much problem except for lack of bus transport”, says Rahul who appeared for the exam.

“My exam went on smooth and there was no problem at all during the slot I wrote to anyone in my lab. Yes, there were some problems in the first two days but this can be continued with necessary measures and resources. The online papers were quite easy to compensate for the first time. I had prepared for this exam well and I did quite well. I am just keeping my fingers crossed and hoping to get a call from the IIMs”, says Rohit who appeared for CAT for the second time and is hoping to pursue his MBA as he has already got two years of job experience.

The server breakdown had created confusion all over for all the B-school aspirants. “The first time I wrote, the system got hanged in between the exam for which the proctors said it was a virus attack and later I was given slot on another day to appear again and I end up getting a paper that was very tough compared to the first paper. I am against all those who are fine with this problem giving it a lame reason that it is being conducted for the first time , we all had written BITSAT exam , that was also online but there wasn’t any problem , why now ? They themselves cannot manage the exam and they are the institutes here to teach us about management of business!” says frustrated Karthik.

“This is literally playing with the careers of the students. How can they be so careless and coolly say it as a virus or server problem. The whole one year I put in for my preparation goes all in vain. I am planning to write it again the coming year and I guess I have no other option”, says disappointed Mahesh

CAT 2009 goes online was the buzz till a few days back. But, the reality is CAT 2009 was caught in a mouse trap and left both students and IIMs perplexed!