IIM's enjoy the well-deserved tag of producing best managers in our country. They conduct their own qualifying exam every year popularly known as CAT (Common Admission Test). It is one of the most competitive and prestigious exams of our country. Some 2.76 lakh students appeared in it in year 2008. However, IIM's decided to make it online last year, Which turned out to be a nightmare for them.

The American firm Prometric was awarded an USD 40 million contract by the Indian Institutes of Management to computerize the prestigious CAT. This contract raised question about successful completion of CAT 2009 then only because of the history of prometric. Prometric, part of the US-based Educational Testing Service (ETS), has been accused of failing to conduct online tests earlier too. In August 2008, The Guardian reported that the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority of the UK had ended its five-year contract with ETS Europe after "serious problems with the administration and marking of tests". ETS, on its part, blamed the authority. In December 2008, Pakistan daily The News International reported that students in Lahore "suffered due to frequent power outages and poor Internet connection while attempting a test (TOEFL) conducted by ETS". Nobody had a clue, why on earth Prometric was given such an important task to conduct?

Between all of this CAT was scheduled from 28 November 2009 to 8 December 2009. On the very first day it started with a big crash. The server crashed because of heavy load and exam was cancelled in these cities - Bhopal, Lucknow, Pune, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Indore and Delhi. The Problems kept on increasing until the last day and it turned out to be a total failure as thousands of aspirants were not able to take part due to technical glitches. Prometric revealed later that due to virus attacks many aspirants were not able to complete their paper. It looked like as if they were not prepared for this. Did they compromised on security issues? Were they not aware of the impact of this major fault? This might have lead to theft of various classified information including the question papers. All this chaos has put them under scanner and it certainly hasn't helped the cause of mba aspirants at all.

The candidates who were somehow not able to complete their exam were expecting a re-test. But the gap between the two exams is not justified. With the re-scheduling of the exam on 30th and 31st of January 2010, things are getting worse. Prometric announced that affected candidates will be informed before 10th of January. They came up with seven criteria's for eligibility to sit in 2nd phase of CAT 2009. In spite of their claim that all the concerned aspirants are informed many dissatisfied candidates wrote in our MBA forum regarding the problems they are facing. They went on to say that, even after successful complition of their exam they have received mail for re-test!

On the other hand CAT convener Professor Satish Deodhar of IIM Ahmedabad said "approximately 10,000 candidates, who fit in one of the seven eligibility criterion listed on catiim.in for a retest, have been identified and all have been informed about their retest slots".

But all hell broke loose when a petition was filed in Karnataka High Court by Harsha. N. S., a resident of Bangalore, Who also participated in 1st phase of exam.

On 7th January, Karnataka High Court admitted the petition and issued notices against the concerned authorities. This Step clearly states the extreme level of dissatisfaction among the CAT aspirants. The result of High court is eagerly awaited.

Now It seems that after such a horrific first attempt CAT will follow the GMAT path in coming years. According to an article from TOI, IIM's now plan to make this entrance test a year-long affair. For students who aspire to get into these central government-run management schools, the decision will allow them to take the test any number of times on any day. To take that road they will have to develop a huge data bank. Once that is done, the obvious thing is to allow students to take the test throughout the year. Initially it was to be implemented right from the first year itself but they doesn't had that many number of questions to allow it to happen. All in all, CAT 2009 has been the worst show of IIM's management system by far. This fiasco will be remembered as the biggest failure of Indian Institute of managements in managing their own qualifying exam! It has clearly sent a sign that they still have a long way to go.

Concluded.