IIMs give 10 days to edit CAT applications

Week one of registration for the Common Admission Test (CAT) has kept the premier Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and Prometric — the company that will conduct the exam online this year — on their toes. Following several technical glitches in the first few days, the IIMs have decided to introduce a 10-day window for candidates to edit their forms before submitting them to the institute.

The chaos started on the first day itself(i.e. September 9) when students found that their CAT applications were being accepted by the website even if a field had been left empty. No box was designated for the middle name and special characters were not accepted confusing students whose residential addresses contain them. To compound the students’ worries, once the application was submitted, there was no option to edit it, leading many of them to buy another voucher in case of an error.

 

“Since students were not able to correct mistakes on the application, and there were frantic calls to our help line to find out if they needed to buy another voucher. We wrote to the IIMs about the technical problems faced so far and assured the students that they would be taken care off. Still, many of them did not want to take a chance and bought a new voucher,” said Ajay Arora, the director of Triumphant Institute of Management Education (TIME), Bangalore.

The IIMs, and Prometric, have been quick to come to students’ rescue and have started updating their website design to ensure the initial glitches get cleared.

Admitting that the IIMs have received “quite a few” complaints from candidates, Satish Deodhar, convenor of CAT 2009, said: “We had no inkling that students would make such mistakes. It may be due to the anxiety of registration. Nevertheless, they do not have to hurry. We will give them ample time to edit and re-do their registrations.” He said that from September 19, 2009 onwards, the registration window will be open for about 10 days for candidates to edit their forms before submitting it to the institute.

“Prometric will take care of the editing process which currently the candidates are not able to access. Also, since they might have bought additional forms due to the mistakes in filling them, candidates will be reimbursed accordingly. Details of the reimbursement will soon be put up on the CAT bulletin website and Prometric will coordinate thereon,” he added.

The IIMs had decided to conduct CAT for differently-abled candidates on December 3, 2009, however for many students across the country the date clashed with their university examinations.

As a result they had requested the IIMs to review their case.

“The standard default date of CAT for differently-abled candidates will remain December 3, 2009. However, those who are facing a problem due to CAT’s clash with other universities’ exams can mail us through the bulletin website and we can fix another suitable date for them,” said Deodhar.