CAT goes online - Views

CAT Goes online – views

The 33-year-old Common Admission Test, used as the yardstick to screen candidates for admissions to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Management, is all set to go digital. Shedding the paper-and-pencil format for a simple Computer-based test (CBT), the IIM’s recently announced that the single-day affair will soon be strung out over a ten day period “sometime at the end of the year”.- is the news from The Hindu.

"It might be an admission of incompetence by the IIM’s that, after many years of conducting the CAT, they have just given up. It is also an admission that for all its talk about India shining, no Indian company was found capable by the IIM’s to conduct the CAT. Nor have the IIM’s, with immense resources and having conducted the examination for decades, been able to develop a system that could rival the ETS, at least in India. Just shows how extraordinarily backward the thinking, even in the prestigious institutes of the country is.

In recent years, mistakes have dogged the CAT paper, in one year it was also leaked. So outsourcing it to ETS is a good step, as ETS has been conducting the GRE and GMAT in a professional, error-free manner for years.

In its present form, the CAT does not measure managerial aptitude but deep mathematical knowledge. It seems that IIM’s believe that MBAs should be mathematical nerds. The test is oriented towards selecting the IIT-types. The GMAT is a more sensible test, as it measures presence of mind and taking decisions under stress. The questions may be termed easy but students tend to make mistakes.

It is quite strange that IIM, after so many years, should be proud of being the toughest examination rather than having developed a test that measures managerial aptitude.

Questions appearing in CAT have no relation to management aptitude and seemed to have been put in by the IIM faculty just to show how high headed or esoteric they could be. It was almost like ragging the students who appeared for the CAT. No wonder the questions were not pre-tested and every year IIM’s had to admit to mistakes". – says CJ Dinesh Gupta, Post Graduate from Chandigarh Punjab(http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=15768790)

Exam Fee: Students’ will not be charged exorbitantly for taking the exam online. According to sources, the price is expected to increase marginally, about 40-50% from Rs 1,100 now to about Rs 1500-1600.

Number appeared for CAT in 2008: There has been a sharp increase in the number of students that take CAT exams each year. Over 2.38 lakh students took the CAT exam in 2008

Number of CAT aspirants this year: Having felt the recession, many are planning to get back to student life aspiring to join prestigious IIM’s for pursuing MBA for which they have to clear CAT via CBT (Computer Based Test). This year the estimated number is around 3,00000.

“The online CAT ensures that we can reach out in a much bigger way. The exam can be administered in many locations where the internet is available,” said IIM Calcutta Dean (programme initiatives) Saibal Chattopadhyay (EconomicTimes)

CAT Preparation: The biggest challenge in front of the test takers is how to prepare for online CAT? If you are not willing to take the test online, settle down for other paper based tests, which might soon go online.

Pros : ü CAT online will make the procedure simple.ü The announcement of ranks and admission process streamlined.ü The whole procedure will become transparent and error freeü It gives flexibility as the student chooses his own time slot.

Cons: Ø As the exam is conducted over a period of time, care should be taken to maintain the same level of difficulty for all the batches.Ø Difficult for candidates appearing from remote areas as there may be no access to internetØ It has a impact on the examination fee.Ø Level of security may be at stake as there may be chances of hacking of software.

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