Prometric, the firm that conducts the Common Admission Test or CAT for admissions to the IIMs, is taking more safeguards this year to have a glitch-free CAT this year.
On Wednesday last, Prometric trainers began training over 2,000 people, including test centre administrators, proctors or the invigilators and site supervisors, who would be deployed to prepare the test centres and also to ensure that all the centres meet the requisite needs for the CAT. Once the training is over, those who have been trained would be tested after each training session to ensure they are able to implement the standards at the third party infrastructure.
The training is being provided in at least eight cities across the country. Prometric is using a hub and spoke model to prepare people for conducting the tests.
It is a global model where corporate test centres and franchise test centres are an accepted norm, said Soumitra Roy, MD, Prometric.
Prometric has had to upgrade hardware at some of the test centres and even the software at some others. It has also had to improve RAM of many of the computers. Prometric will have contingency seats at all the centres in case any candidate faces problem with the terminal where heôshe is taking the test. Also, in case of such a contingency, the candidate will be able to move from one system to another, and would be able to continue from where he/she has stopped at the previous computer. Last year, the candidates could not restart tests, and was the biggest complaint last time.
This year, Visakhapatnam has been added to the list of cities where the tests would be held. This would take the number of centres to 33. Also, it is providing infrastructure to test upto 15,000 candidates a day. Also, the test will be conducted over 20 days, with the company preparing the infrastructure to test upto 300,000 candidates. Some 175,000 applications have already been sold for CAT.