Phase two of CAT on Jan 30-31, results in Feb

The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have announced the second phase of Common Admission Test (CAT) would be conducted on January 30 and 31. The exam results, could be declared by the third week of February.

“Equity and fairness requires that candidates who faced disruptions during the test be given an opportunity to complete the test while not requiring those who completed the test successfully to take it again,” said a statement on the CAT-IIM website.

The IIMs have analysed the calls and e-mails received from the candidates, site reports filed by the site managers, computer logs, and gathered information from websites and blogs to arrive at a list of candidates for the second phase of the examination.

Candidates who would qualify to appear for test in the second phase include those who could not take the test due to planned or unplanned closure of their test labs and were not rescheduled later in the first phase; those who were rescheduled but could not appear for the test because of notice period of less than 48 hours. It also included those who were rescheduled but could not appear for the test as they were rescheduled in a city different from their original choice and those who pressed the End/Quit button within the first 120 minutes during the first three days of the testing window and have not been rescheduled yet.

Also, those who experienced difficulties due to various disruptions such as frozen computer screen, blank screen, and data/graphic elements not displaying properly; identified through site reports recorded at the test labs and have not been rescheduled yet will be eligible to appear for the second phase of CAT.

However, students who voluntarily did not appear for the exams will not be eligible to take the exams.

According to the statement, if a candidate in this category chooses not to take the rescheduled test, then his/her score from the first phase of testing will be retained. Other criteria include those who completed the test in more than 140 minutes of clock time due to computer disruptions, those who completed the test in 136 minutes to 140 minutes of clock-time due to computer disruptions would have an option to take the rescheduled test.

The candidates identified for the re-test in phase two would receive communication from Prometric by January 10, 2010.

Originally scheduled to be conducted between November 28 and December 7, 2009, the first computer-based CAT had to be extended by an extra day as technical glitches marred the test. Close to 20,000 students were not able to take the exam in the first three days. At the end of the testing period, it was estimated that around 8,000 students had difficulties taking the test.

Nearly 241,000 applicants registered for the CAT this year which saw chaos in the first few days with centres facing technical issues. The IIMs blamed the virus ‘Conficker’ for playing havoc with the computer systems. CAT is mandatory for students who wish to study at the seven IIMs and over 150 other B-schools in India.