The common admission test (CAT) will finally go online from 2009. The Indian Institute of Managements (IIMs), including the Rajiv Gandhi Indian Institute of Management, Shillong, issued a pre-qualification bid on Monday inviting service providers, IT firms specialising in assessment and testing services, for computerisation of the CAT exam. ET reported this first on October 24, 2007.
The decision will benefit thousands of students who take CAT each year. Last year 2,30,000 students appeared for CAT and the numbers are expected to increase to more than 3,00,000 in 2008. According to sources, the IIMs are contemplating conducting CAT online for almost 15 days, during which students can choose when to take the exam. Initially the IIMs were contemplating a time period of 30 days.
“The initiative will be rolled out in 2009. The idea is to provide a time window, whereby students can take the examination within the stipulated period,” said IIM Lucknow director Dr Devi Singh. The last forum of IIM directors’ was held at IIM Lucknow on February 21. An additional reason to take the CAT online is to reduce the time spent on administration and evaluation process. When ET contacted IIM-Ahmedabad director Prof Samir Barua he said he had “no comments to offer on the recent development”.
The decision comes after a long wait. According to sources, the first directors’ forum was held in July 2007 where Prometric, one of the leading testing and assessment services firm, made a presentation to the directors of all seven IIMs.
The pre-qualification bid document states that the service provider will undertake tasks right from application processing, test construction, test delivery, result processing to score reporting. Prometric and Attest Testing Services (a wholly owned subsidiary of Aptech) among various other testing and assessment services firms are expected to bid for the contract. With the CAT going online, 124 other management institutions which use the CAT score will also streamline their admission processes in accordance with the new system.
Experts, though, believe that there will be significant challenges the IIMs will have to overcome to implement a robust system, the primary one being providing physical infrastructure. There is a case where implementation on such a large scale has failed — the computerisation of the Xavier’s admission test (XAT) in 2002.
Students’ will not be charged exorbitantly for taking the exam online. According to sources, the price is expected to increase marginally, about 40-50% from Rs 1,100 now to about Rs 1500-1600.
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