NMIMS conducts glitch-free computer-based admission test

Business school Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) of Mumbai said 40,000 students in 12 countries had appeared its maiden computer-based admission test between January 30 and February without any glitches reported from anywhere.

NMIMS had selected Pearson Vue as its partner for administering the test. Pearson Vue, which conducts more than 7 million tests in 165 countries, said no test batch was cancelled due to technical or infrastructure issues.

As part of its contingency plan, Vue had asked candidates to keep February 9 free in case their test needed to be re-scheduled. But with a smooth roll-out on each of the ten days of testing, the contingency was not invoked, a press release said.

Minor disruptions were managed quickly by the NMIMS Admission Test (NMAT) administrators on-site, the release said.

"The NMAT-2010 was a landmark event for NMIMS. Transition of the paper-based NMAT to CBT had its risks. However, we were reassured by Pearson Vue’s depth of planning and contingency framework," said Prof. Rajan Saxena, Vice Chancellor, NMIMS.

"NMIMS owes this success to Pearson Vue’s proven global test delivery system, execution excellence and administering the test with a personal touch," he added.

The CBT adopted by NMIMS enabled Pearson Vue to quickly respond to potential technology glitches, which would not have been possible in a paper and pencil single sitting format.

Each test session had a unique question paper to ensure standardization, test security and integrity. For NMIMS, Pearson Vue will follow standard global equating norms and practices to create comparable scores from multiple test forms.

"The idea,"Prof. Anupam Rastogi, Chairman, NMAT Admissions Committee, said, "is to offer a level playing field to all candidates."

"Candidates’ feedback - instant and on blog after the tests - has been heartening," Pearson Vue's Managing Director for Asia Pacific Sarvesh Shrivastava said. "We will strive to improve the student experience even further in subsequent test administrations," he added.

The NMAT results will be posted on the college website http://www.nmims.edu on March 2, 2010. The test results will be used for admission to NMIMS’ management programmes.

The NMIMS campus at Hyderabad will be ready by April this year and it has recently acquired land in Chandigarh for the establishment of a campus in north India, the release added.

NNN