Prometric willing to allow students recheck CAT scores

After nearly a month of silence despite the furore created by MBA aspirants over the lack of transparency surrounding the methodology of Common Admission Test (CAT) scores, Prometric says it will allow students to recheck their CAT scores. The company conducted the first computer-based entrance test for IIMs.

Soumitra Roy, MD, Prometric India, told Business Standard: “If students are so sure their scores are not according to their expectations, they don’t need to file an RTI. They can ask us to recheck their scores, and we shall do that.”

Around 50 students have filed Right to Information (RTI) applications till date, with some even mulling public interest litigations (PILs) to force the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and Prometric to reveal the scoring methodology.

“We understand what the candidates must be going through. They can just write to Prometric’s candidate care and ask for re-checking the scores. Whatever happened with the exam on the first three days did not affect the scores. We are a data-driven company. Datum speaks for itself, there is no conjecturing and we can validate it.”

Roy, however, maintained that Prometric cannot give out raw scores. “We cannot give out the raw scores as the IIMs have not instructed us to do so. We have a methodology in place which we have been using for over a decade. This is part of the established best practices world over. I cannot understand how people are questioning it. Besides, raw scores are of no relevance. If people start asking what is my scoring process, I have to engage hundreds of statisticians to explain it,” Roy added.

Out of over 241,000 students registered for CAT 2009, 217,000 took the test. Originally supposed to run from November 28 to December 7, CAT was extended by a day. Later, for 10,000 students who could not take the test due to the technical glitches initially, the exam was conducted for two more days, January 30-31, 2010.

The exam was conducted at 361 testing labs at 104 locations across 32 cities in India. To secure 17,000 computer facilities, the existing network of computers within the colleges selected as testing centres were utilised. There were video recording of 90,000 hours from 361 labs at 104 centres.

“We invoked a lot of interest having done something path-breaking in the country and game changing by taking CAT as computer-based. If you see the magnitude, it was a huge project. We deployed several thousands of resources which helped us take it through. We are still identifying the root causes of what went wrong on the first three days. We are still investigating whatever happened,” said Roy.