A good 24 hours after the announcement of the CAT 2013 results, a bunch of complaints alleging ‘wrong evaluation’ are pouring in thick and fast. And so fast is the dissent spreading that in the last 8 hours or so an online petition urging re-evaluation has attracted over 1,100 signatures and similar Facebook movement is taking place simultaneously.

Candidates allege that the Sectional scores are not in sync with their overall performance. Abhishek Leel, who is spearheading the online petition explained that there is a lot of discrepancy in the CAT 2013 results. ” People have not got scores according to their performance. Some have got 99.xx in one section and 20.x x in another. Some people have inflated scores as well. There is definitely a technical glitch in Prometric’s system.”

When pointed out that people could have got such scores because of negative marking, Abhishek replied that candidates generally get marks akin to their Mocks. “It does not go totally off the mark to this extent.”

Shashank Saurav who has taken charge of the FB group says that complains about CAT exam come in every year. “Last year on what basis did the authorities say that only 80 scores have been tampered with. How are we sure others were not affected?

“The number of complainants this year is huge,” says Shashank. “Earlier I thought only I had poor marks and felt dejected but within few hours have found some 450 with the same problems. Even if you say 200 of the 450 are not genuine complaints, the remaining are. One cannot simply ignore them.”

The aggrieved candidates claim that they have sent repeated emails to the IIM-I authorites but they have just got a standard reply saying:

Dear Candidate,

Noted. There is no process for re-evaluation. However, we will look into it and revert to you in due course of time.

Best wishes,

CAT Centre 2013

Candidates are worried that ‘due course of time’ may be too late as institutes have started publishing their shortlists. There are many candidates who have written or spoken to PaGaLGuY about the discrepancies in their scores. There has been talk the whole day today about one candidate who claimed he did not attempt a single question and yet scored 55 percentile in CAT 2013.

IIM officials answered that a person not attempting a single question can get a percentile of 55 since marking for CAT exam works on relativity. “If candidates have answered more questions but got many of them wrong, they can get a percentile below 55 percentile because of negative marking.”

Which brings us to the question – Is the marking/evaluation system in CAT fair. We will be writing another article on the subject and also showing you a glimpse of the disparity in scores. If you have any insights, write in.

And we have asked Prometric for a response as well. As soon as it comes in, we will notify and add.