IIM CAT 2009 extended by one day in 20 cities

The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), which are faced with serious glitches with their Common Admission Test (CAT 2009) after it went online for the first time this year, announced today that the examination would be extended by a day to accommodate candidates who were not able to test on their scheduled day due to the technical difficulties.

Accordingly, there will be an extra session of the examination on December 8 morning in 20 cities, the IIMs and Prometric, the company selected by the elite institutes to deliver the test, said in a joint statement.

"On 8 December (Day 11), CAT 2009 will be held over one morning session in 20 cities," it said.

The 20 cities are Bangalore, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Cochin (Kochi), Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, New Delhi, Noida, Greater Noida, Pune and Varanasi.

CAT 2009 began on November 28 and was originally scheduled to run until December 7, with two sessions on each of the ten days.

The statement said the computer-based CAT involved the delivery of examinations on 17,000 computers in 361 temporary testing labs at 104 centres in 32 cities throughout India.

It said that by the end of December 3 (Day 6 of CAT 2009), more than 112,000 candidates had completed testing.

"Majority of affected candidates have already been rescheduled and many of these have also completed their testing. In the meantime, virtually all candidates are continuing to successfully test without issues, and the number of impacted candidates has decreased significantly," it said.

"We understand and regret the additional stress and inconvenience caused to candidates who have not been able to test on their scheduled day due to technical difficulties," said Mr Ramesh Nava, Vice President & General Manager, Asia Pacific, Japan & Africa, Prometric.

"We are working with the IIMs to add an additional session on Day 11 to accommodate them within the city they were originally scheduled," he added.

According to the statement, in response to feedback from candidates, Prometric has extended the hours for the CAT Candidate Care (1800 103 9293), added more telephone lines and Candidate Care agents to accommodate the high volume of calls.

Effective December 3, the Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) and phone support will be available everyday from 8 am – 8 pm throughout the testing period, it said.

A total of 241,582 candidates registered for the CAT 2009. The test, reputed to be the toughest entrance examination for business schools in the world, was held in the paper-and-pencil format for the past 33 years. Till last year, it used to be held in a single session on the same day -- usually the third Sunday of November -- across the country.

The statement said that, as part of their planned contingency, Prometric had prepared the registration and scheduling system to accommodate volumes in excess of the projected number of candidates to ensure that any additional demand could be fulfilled.

"The CAT 2009 has been extended to accommodate, within this year’s testing period, all the registered candidates to whom the test has yet to be delivered as scheduled. Some testing labs (one test centre could have several labs) have experienced technical difficulties mainly on the account of viruses and malware. Majority of these issues have been identified and eradicated. However Prometric, in partnership with NIIT, is continuing to monitor and assess all labs. In the event that testing is not possible for any session at specific labs, affected candidates will be contacted via SMS and email the day before. Rescheduling of these candidates will then be initiated and new appointments communicated again via SMS and email," it said.

In the first few days of this year's CAT, hundreds of candidates could not appear for the test on their scheduled days because of the virus, malware and other technical glitches. Many of those who did appear for the examination also complained of a variety of problems that they faced.

On day 2 and 3, about 50 of the affected labs had a planned closure to avoid further inconvenience to the candidates and to allow for all the necessary repairs to be completed.

The CAT is a pre-requisite for admission to various management programmes conducted by the IIMs, including their flagship two-year Post-Graduate Programmes (PGP) in Management. Many other institutions also use the CAT scores to finalise admissions to their management programmes.

The seven IIMs are located at Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Lucknow, Kozhikode, Indore and Shillong.

Four more IIMs are due to start functioning from the academic session 2010-11 at Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu, Ranchi in Jharkhand, Raipur in Chhattisgarh and Rohtak in Haryana. Two others in Uttarakhand and Rajasthan will be set up the following year.

The CAT score cards will be available on the CAT website from January 22, 2010.

NNN