GUI issues: Insignificant as the problem may seem, the location of the ‘End test’ button right next to the ‘next question’ button has caused heartbreak for more than a few unsuspecting students. At least one student in almost every lab [each centre has multiple labs where batches of approx 30 people take the test at a time] has accidentally hit the ‘end test’ button in the first three days. The worst part is that there is no prompt asking if you are sure that you want to end the test. This is standard practice even in the most casually developed games, leave aside a national level test.

System issues: In the first three days at least, systems used for administering the test would just hang for no apparent reason [confirmed  and reliable sources for this information] the proctors/invigilators would then simply restart the system and continue the test. Some candidates benefited as they got more time to think about questions they had already seen. Some others were pushed to panic as they were new and unfamiliar with the interface.

Malpractice: By the 4th day day some of the candidates had started abusing the system. They would take down two or three questions on the rough paper provided to them and simply restart the system and call the invigilators saying that the system had crashed and shut down automatically. While the invigilators were restarting the system, these candidates would utilize the time to solve the 2-3 problems. Note that the test auto saves all data frequently. The timer state is also saved should a system crash, hence anyone who does what is described above would get at least 5-7 extra minutes every time his/her system crashed. In the last two days, some candidates systems have been ‘crashing’ as much as 4 times in a test.

There are other ways to ‘crack’ the CAT which are now common knowledge in the community of informed CAT takers.

Questions and information leaking: Passages in RC are easily remembered and from people who have given the CAT I know that people giving the exam in the last 3 days will have a distinct advantage as far as awareness about the type of questions, the difficulty level, type of passages, etc. is considered.

With these kind of malpractices and issues which create a huge amount of variations in the test itself and the conditions under which it is taken, there are going to be  a huge number of capable candidates missing out on a once-a-year opportunity for absolutely no fault of theirs. There will also definitely be a significant number of candidates who choose to use unscrupulous means to get past this first hurdle in the selection process and will land up getting calls for GD-PI process.

In my personal opinion, it is only reasonable to expect that the people who make the decisions at the IIMs will prefer to suffer minimal embarrassment over Prometric’s goof-up rather than compromise on the quality of students, the fairness of the selection procedure and the confidence people have on the CAT. It only remains to be seen what course of action they actually take. The recent announcement of adding an extra day to accommodate the candidates who faced problems while giving the test is too small a measure and does not address the larger issues plaguing the CAT this year.

-Joel Xavier
The author is a graduate of IIM Ahmedabad

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