New Delhi/Bangalore: Trauma and anxiety swept through scores of centres where candidates gathered for the Common Admission Test (CAT) to enter India’s top business and management schools, including the seven IIMs, on Saturday as the first online version of the test blocked them with access denials and system glitches. Although, no official estimate was available, several thousand candidates were unable to either take or complete the test.

From Bangalore to Delhi, there was chaos and confusion with students either being refused entry or simply walking out because the system collapsed and would not open up for them to crack the questions.     “I was here on time but they are not allowing me to write the test. There is no one here to help me. I do not know what to do,’’ said Sakthian who was appearing for CAT for the first time.

 In New Delhi, the first session, which was scheduled to commence from 10 am, started after a delay of around 30 minutes in many centres. As students sat down to log in, computers took ages to start and then in many cases, the password was rejected. The scene was no different in the evening session as well. “When the system refused to accept the password I thought my world was crashing. I kept on trying for a long time without success. What is even worse is the Prometric people there asking me to contact the call centre,’’ said Shashank Shekhar, a candidate at Asia-Pacific Institute of Management (AIM), Sarita Vihar, New Delhi.

Prometric, the company which was administering the test, gave vague answers to why there were so many glitches and promised to hold a retest and contact all the affected students. Members of the CAT committee in IIM, Ahmedabad, were not forthcoming either. A statement from Prometric claimed that at most places exams were conducted successfully and delays were to help more students take the test.

GLITCHES GALORE

ACCESS DENIED |

Took more than 15 min to enter exam centres after identity checks

BOOT OUT |

Computers had trouble starting

PASSWORD REJECTED |

Often, the system rejected the candidate’s unique password

CALLING IT QUITS |

On its own, the system prompted the examination to end

SHUTTING DOWN |

One candidate in Delhi said the system shut down on its own six times during the 2-1/2 hour test

Despite server hiccup, online CAT a smooth affair in city

Hyderabad: B-school aspirants appearing for the Common Admission Test (CAT), which went online for the first time this year, faced only a delay in server booting which derailed the test for an hour during the morning session at all the eight centres in the city on Saturday.

 Students who took the test at JNTU-Kukatpally said the examination which was supposed to start at 10 am started only after a delay of one hour. “We were not able to access the test portal in spite of the university’s technicians jumping into action right from the beginning. Though many were worried, we now feel that a delay is better than an indefinite postponement which has happened in the case of students from many other centres. Hence we have no complaints,” a test taker told STOI.

Students from the city were, however, more vexed with the troubles thrown up by the online test. “One cannot look through all questions at one time as the portal allows access to only limited number of questions, unlike in the pen and paper pattern. Many students would have stuck to the chronological way of solving questions and this would have reduced their chances of scoring well,” an expert said.

Meanwhile, the evening session in all the eight test centres in the city went without a hitch.    In spite of the snags, CAT 2009 was considered to be easier than the previous years’ test. The number of questions came down and the time slot for the examination had increased. While in CAT 2008, the number of questions were 90, 30 questions were dropped in CAT 2009. There were twenty questions in each of the three sessions (Maths, Reading Comprehension, Logical Understanding and Data Interpretation).

“Data Interpretation session was long and time-consuming. In other sessions the questions were simpler to crack. Cat 2009 followed the pattern of CAT 2006 which was quite simple,” said R Shiv Kumar, head, Research and Development, Career Launcher coaching centre.

Interestingly, the test takers were asked not to discuss or share information on the exam (in verbal or written form) on or before December 7, the final day slotted for CAT-2009. “Some questions are likely to be repeated. Hence the test takers were asked not to discuss the questions or any information about the examination. But as per predictions some of the CAT questions will definitely come out in the open for others who appear for later tests,” director of a CAT coaching centre said.

CAT 2009 also had some surprises like the resurfacing of logical reasoning and longwinding calculations in the Data Interpretation section, experts said.

 Surprisingly the marks to be awarded for each right answer and negative marking for the wrong ones were not mentioned in the question paper for students to calculate even an estimated cut off. However, according to experts, a student who has cleared 40 to 42 questions out of the 60 is likely to get a call from at least one of the IIMs.     The IIMs have, however, in a no-disclosure notice, threatened legal action on students if they disclose contents of the test. Other CAT experts felt that the test will go the GRE and GMAT way, with a question bank from where questions are repeated every year.