To CAT Or Not To CAT- discussing the wild side

11th DEC 2009

TO CAT or NOT to CAT

How strange is it when two people, who believe in one thing, just for the heck of a discussion choose two sides and start defending it. Believe me, truth is much stranger than it seems. The other day my friend and I were discussing about the online CAT fiasco and mulling over whether or not should CAT be repeated with a paper-pencil format. Now both of us believe that there are a lot of things which went wrong in this year’s CAT. There was a lax attitude from the organizers of CAT who failed to judge the amount of people sitting in for these exams. They might have had good results with their simulation tests, but the actual scenario was something else. Then the network viruses through the pen-drives (they actually used infected pen-drives to install the software) adding to more hullabaloo. Thousands of candidates endured problems like a server crash at their centre, their exam date being rescheduled or the incessant cheating in the hall; there were even cases in which quite a few got an extra 30-45 minutes on the pretext of a server crash. The organizers didn’t even have a contingency plan! In a scenario like this wouldn’t anyone support re-examination in a paper-pencil format! The fact however is that our conversation led us to exploring a myriad points to see the whole situation in a better light.
I’ll walk you through the conversation on the night of 11th Dec 2009 when I was driving Divya back home from office. The conversation struck up when we were nearing her house. This week itself there had been rumors that the ministry might be pressurizing the IIM’s to reconduct the prestigious entrance exam as it was simply not upto the mark. However, my room-mate told me that day itself that the rumors were just a hoax and the IIM’s are planning to keep the examination in the online format for those who had some problems with their exam; something which just got confirmed two days back. So I just mentioned this fact to her in the car. Apparently she didn’t take the point really well and fumed and started defending on behalf of all the candidates who were not meted out a fair trial for the paper. “ what about the people who got extra time and what about people who were rescheduled for a later date….unka frame of mind to kharaab hua hoga na”…now how was I supposed to defend that? I myself didn’t have the best time giving the online version, but I sided with the fact that a re-exam would only call for a waste of resources. The fact remains that even if one person has a problem, there will be a whole group of people who would simply take pleasure in infusing chaos and watch the whole system crumble. Now the car was in front of her house. I stopped but the conversation was still on. The debater in both of us had just started. So I turned on the ignition once more and drove to a nearby park and resumed the conversation seated in the car . I had my point of wastage of additional resources (paper) to build on. One more exam would only cause more anxiety and unrest among the people. Worse, a re-exam would only throw light on the fact that the most prestigious exam in India has failed due to mismanagement. Just imagine the amount of damage. “but why can’t they call all of us together once in for all and re-conduct the exam…this way they will be fair to all….itna to banta hai yaar…for all that has gone wrong…they should ask prometric to pay up for this mess”. Well, Divya did have a point of being fair there. Perhaps they could seriously repair the damage with this gimmick. I was mostly convinced with this part. Though I do believe that asking Prometric to sponsor the paper-based exam wouldn’t work. Now there are a lot of official documents and a whole lot of signatures which safeguard prometric against any such disasters. Pretty strange, I’ve heard they have a 5 year contract to conduct such exams (certainly not with so many flaws)…that must be a whopping amount. So I told Divya about this and told her that perhaps the additional expenditure would be adjusted in our tuition fees only. It’s easy to pass the baton to someone who is eager to take it.
Now the impatience in her voice was growing and she was hell bent on supporting a re-exam. “Why was there a need to make it online in the first place”. Now that got me thinking and I realized why they invested so much. I told Divya that it was necessary for them to keep evolving with time so an online exam was necessary. I gathered all the facts that I could and asked her “What do you think is the rank of IIM-A on a global scale?”... She was kind of taken aback and suddenly started thinking. Till then I fired a few more questions. “Why is IIM-A not on the global list?”, “How do you think the top college in the world conducts its exam?”, “Which exam is more difficult; GMAT or CAT?” Since I had the answers ready, I started answering my own questions. Only one IIM, i.e. IIM-A, figures in the list of top 100 business schools all over the world. And its rank is 69; not all that great. All the top business schools have GMAT as their entrance exam. Infact even ISB (rank 15 worldwide) has its entrance through GMAT and definitely GMAT is much easier than the CAT. It’s just that we have a habit of running in races with a lot of people and big competition that we miss out the easier races. The reason why IIM is not globally recognized is because it actually doesn’t give a global exposure. It has become a respite for dissatisfied engineers (NOM). There is hardly any international junta in these institutes. Unless and until the place has an equal distribution of people from different countries and from various fields, the IIM’s cannot be called a global institute. More than the teaching, the peers of an institute make a difference to your thinking. At a place where the variety of people is less, the learning also becomes limited.
Now why IIM’s wanted to keep this traditional exam online might be because they have realized what they lack and sooner or later they are willing to flung their gates open to a lot more people. Perhaps the online exam was a step to get the CAT in the limelight. Who knows they might be planning to keep this exam across the globe if it turns out to be a success. That should make a whole lot of difference to their global exposure. In turn the ranks would go up hopefully. If this thing really happens, the big incentive would be that you will get your education in one of the best institutes in the world providing you with a global exposure and a homely environment. It would even become affordable for an average middle-class guy with dreams and aspirations.

Let’s see the things in a new light. Perhaps, the new CAT pattern requires more support than criticisms to prove it. The problem of brain drain is already evident in India. Who knows, this might regulate the amount of brains running helter-skelter. “But what about our grievances?…If a candidate has been granted 45 minutes extra for his paper…then I have a problem with that…in fact, all of us should have a problem with that” Divya suddenly got me to a problem which we had not yet touched. So I asked her “what else ….tell me more such things…there has got to be a solution to this”. “Well, then there is the cheating which happened at the centres…for which no action was taken…aur bhi bahut kuch hai….rescheduling of exams for people….then Praveer ka bhi case lelo…do you think it is fair?”. Now, Praveer is my friend from my engineering college who had his paper on the 3rd day. He had been pepped up to give the exam and had built up a good enthu. But unfortunately when he reached his centre on the d-day, he had to wait for a good three hours due to some server problem. After the excruciating wait for the machines to be fine, the whole batch was finally directed to their labs. Unfortunately, Praveer and 8 other people in the batch didn’t have their names on the roll call list. This was again some technical glitch of theirs. So they were made to wait two more hours; just the 9 of them. Finally, they were told that they have to come and give the examination again; how frustrating!!!and that too after such a long wait. I dunno about all the 9 people, but as far as Praveer is concerned, he had lost his momentum, enthu and focus…he was very disappointed with the whole system…and angry too…One of my seniors had told me once, give your CAT with cool mind and you will nail it…seemed like a far-fetched proposition for Praveer…What is worse is he got to know about his next centre for the exam over his cell phone…sometime after the paper had ended…can you imagine?? It was in ‘Byculla’ this time, a place which he had never been to…So it was again rescheduled and this time his centre was in ‘Khargar’….miles away from ‘Andheri’ ( where he stays)…Praveer gave his exam on the 7th day with half the zeal, double the exhaustion and almost zero patience. He might still be able to crack it this time…but he told me that he had already lost his cool and that his efficiency was near about 80% during the paper. I was already staring blankly at the sky thinking about Praveer’s experience; why such things didn’t strike me; of course I had a problem with all these things. “We have all been victimized and are at the mercy of some miracle…there are trade-offs for every route which would lead from here…perhaps more victimized because we forget our power to question the system…they owe us an answer…they owe us a detailed answer sheet to all our queries and complaints. The arena has not been even for anyone Sid, even you know that…everyone has paid heavily and there is no solution” Divya answered as she knew that I didn’t have an answer at that point of time. I was fumbling for words but I had to conjure up something to support my argument. “So that makes it three problems…extra time for some…cheating…and cases of rescheduling...nothing else, right?” I asked. Divya nodded slowly thinking about the various other complaints that she had. But then she nodded firmly. “Let us take this first…what solution would you have for these anyway?” she asked. It is strange, but the more I thought over it, the more plausible set of things came to my mind. “Did you notice the cameras at our exam centre lab…there were 8 cameras in all in that small lab” I said. The total number of people in that lab was around 80. “It wouldn’t have been fair on their part to catch people while they were cheating as it disturbs the people around so I am hoping that people who have cheated during the exam have already been eliminated as they must be having a comprehensive footage of the exam. As for your concern about people who got extra time, again the analysis of the video tapes and data logs can reveal the people who got extra time for this exam…agar yeh nahin bhi hota hai toh they can still find out the specific labs and slots where such server crashes had occurred and reschedule the exam for the whole batch” I replied answering two out of the three questions which she had posed. “Though it would take considerable efforts, but this would at least make it just for all…I’m hoping that they are considering these things otherwise it is indeed going to be unfair come to think of it…Rahi baat Praveer ke case ki ya anything similar which involved rescheduling, uska to koi solution nahin dikh raha…halanki having the CAT once more would again be a huge question mark to the zeal and enthusiasm of people. Besides there are people who have been happy with the online format as the paper was pretty simple…they will grumble if there is a re-exam; and it won’t be fair to them now”. It was perhaps best to see the solution to this situation as one with the least possible compromise. The online format had caught all of us off-guard. So many of us are still not used to answering on a computer screen properly. The apprehensions had brewed up a long time back and people had more doubts than answers to what this system will result into. So obviously when the system crashed, instead of supporting it, all the dissatisfied lot got together and pounced at it with full fury to tear it apart further. What looked bad was made to look ghastly by the provocateurs. Now there was also a business angle to this situation. All the extra classes and sessions and those extra unexpected bucks which coaching classes could have made because of scrapping the CAT. So they also joined the movement to roll out petitions in favor of scrapping CAT and doing it all over again. But not their mistake I guess as who doesn’t like making the best out of some chaos. However, it was a mistake on our part to simply be driven by the ideas and opinions of someone else without reasoning it. I’m sure it must have been very hard for the IIM’s not to bend under such pressure and I’m glad that they could stand tall. I’m sure they would have analyzed the situation in a much better fashion than two people who just casually chose a topic to discuss. If they would have yielded, it would have only shown a poor will and a lack of power to stick to their interpretations of this situation.

With the deep discussion that we had gotten into, we did see that pressing the reset button was definitely not the solution with the least bit of compromise. Perhaps a meticulously done re-exam of the few people who were given extra time, or whose servers had crashed or who had some grievance would come close. If the organizers set-up a section online for actively tackling such grievances, then I guess we will achieve fairness in some form with equal efforts from both sides. But the big question was if they would take these pains to ensure all of this.
My wrist watch diverted my attention and I realized that it was already 10. Two hours into the discussion and still thinking about it. Divya seemed more pacified and agreed to me now. She seconded the thought that if this exam was so crucial for the reputation of the IIM’s then they should stick to it. I actually convinced both of us (well I had just taken a side in the argument) to believe this now. I headed back to her house; we said our goodbyes and I finally geared up to go back home still thinking deeper about whether “ To CAT or NOT to CAT ”

-Regards
Siddhartha

Spcl thanks to Divya for providing her valuable inputs and filling in the gaps between our conversation. Lot of points here have been contributed by her and she has done a lot of editing too. A few of my friends have also helped me polish this ‘blog’ by sending across their inputs, and not to forget their continuous motivation throughout and giving me the green flag to go ahead with this.