Aspirants question scoring system

Even as the IIMs declared the Common Admission Test (CAT) results, aspirants expressed doubts over the evaluation system adopted for the online CAT 2009.

Even as the IIMs declared the Common Admission Test (CAT) results, aspirants expressed doubts over the evaluation system adopted for the online CAT 2009.

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The first ever online format, in place of paper pencil mode, adopted a different set of questions for different slots that went on for 11 days starting November 28 last year. With technical glitches bringing down the servers, thousands of aspirants couldn’t give their exam.

To accommodate them, IIMs and Prometric, the agency conducting the test, extended the exam by two more days in December and one in January.

A total of 2.42 lakh candidates registered for CAT 2009.

“I am disappointed with my score. While, without much preparation, I scored 96.89 percentile last year, this time my score was 93.06. We are not sure what sort of evaluation has been done by the IIMs,” Apurva Shah (23), an engineering graduate from Ahmedabad who earlier worked with Infosys, said.

“The difficulty levels varied for each slot…we don’t know how the IIMs standardised all the questions and reached these scores,” Aman Shah (20), a student, said.

But the IIMs said they had adopted global parameters for the evaluation and there can be no doubt about the results. “The evaluation is similar to GMAT or GRE, where equivalence is arrived from across the tests and appropriate scores awarded. I do not think there can be any scope of doubt,” Samir Barua, director, IIM Ahmedabad said.

Barua, however, said the evaluation is done by Prometric, which also conducts online tests like GRE.