CAT 2010 starts from October 27

Common Admission Test (CAT), mandatory for admission to the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and 150 other B-schools across the country, will this year be administered across 33 cities from October 27 through November 24.

IIMs and Prometric announced in a media statement that vouchers for CAT 2010 would be available for sale at select Axis Bank branches from August 30 through September 27. Registration and scheduling would open on August 30 and close on September 30. In addition to this, Prometric said it would also release a collection of short videos taht will be made available online to familiarise candidates with the registration and scheduling process, test day procedures and other aspects of CAT. In order to ensure candidates are appropriately prepared, a separate video would be developed to explain the scoring method.

“Prometric is committed to providing appropriate resources to ensure that each candidate can register for CAT confident in the knowledge of how the test will be administered and evaluated,” said Prometric India Managing Director Soumitra Roy. “We encourage all candidates to review these materials as they prepare for the exam,” Roy added. Videos will be available on the CAT website www.catiim.in for candidates to review after August 30.

Last year, Prometric and the IIMs had received flak from the student community as several thousands of students were unable to take the test on their scheduled dates due to technical glitches after IIMs did away with the paper-pencil format of CAT and made the test computer-based.

The glitches were blamed on a computer virus. CAT had to be extended to accommodate students who couldn’t take the test due to technical difficulties. Nearly 241,000 applicants had registered for the test.

Students who were not satisfied with their results had also filed right to information (RTI) applications to get details of test process.