Glitches continue, lack of feedback still an issue; IIMs assure ‘damage control’.
Despite the collective assurance of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), Prometric and NIIT to set things right, the Common Admission Test (CAT) continued to witness chaos at some centres on Day Four of the test. However, there were fewer technical glitches today, compared to the first three days.
For instance, at Bangalore’s troublesome Garden City College centre, which is turning out to be an embarrassment for Prometric, two labs had to be shutdown citing technical issues. Around 60 students’ test will be rescheduled from this centre alone. Problems were also reported from the TIT college centre in Bhopal and few others in Lucknow and Delhi.
A majority of the students came out of their centres heaving a sigh of relief after managing to write the exam without major problems, but there was a tinge of concern as well.
“When I was taking the exam, the computer took a lot of time in refreshing, despite the fact that Prometric had told us that there would be no time lag in refreshing. I lost almost 10 minutes because of this and every minute is precious in the exam,” said Karishma Dawar, an IIM aspirant who took the CAT in a Faridabad centre.
A day before, the IIMs had admitted that their maiden attempt to make the CAT a computer-based test had come a cropper, acknowledging that 7,000-8,000 students were unable to take the test in the first three days.
The most worrisome factor, however, remained lack of communication. On day four of the test, students whose exams have been rescheduled in the last three days were yet to hear from Prometric.
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Ajay Arora, director of TIME in Bangalore said students in many centres had to stand in a line for more than an hour before they could appear for the exam, which put considerable strain on them. One centre in Bhopal had students stuck in their labs till nearly 8 pm in the second slot due to delays.
The conducting bodies continued to be apologetic. “This is a big letdown and at the end of the day, it is our fault. Promteric is only our vendor and a testing agency, while NIIT is the technology partner. It is our responsibility if anyone goes through any inconvenience. We collectively and individually apologise for that and we will do some damage control. Students have suffered and we hope that this issue is sorted out. We will do whatever it takes to do as we are collectively responsible,” Devi Singh, IIM Lucknow’s director told Business Standard.