This year, Prometric is leaving no stone unturned in interfacing with the media, ostensibly in order to create goodwill among CAT 2010 takers. Last week, Prometric provided a sneak preview into the CAT 2010 testing interface to the media in New Delhi and Mumbai. Some excerpts from the Mumbai press conference with their Managing Director Soumitra Roy.

Registering for CAT 2010

The CAT 2010 website has been redesigned to match the Global Usability Standards and the registration process is reported to be much smoother than what it was last year, said Mr Roy. Also, videos uploaded on the site are meant to familiarize the candidates with the check-in process.

Test Centers, Checking-in on the test day

CAT 2010 will be held in 33 cities across 78 centers, in a total of 247 testing labs and 9,000+ computer terminals. That’s down from 104 centers in CAT 2009 all amounting to more than 17,000 computer terminals.

We have given utmost priority to the physical and technical infrastructure (while choosing the centers), the security arrangements and the backup power-supply options. We will personally make sure that all the systems have updated software the absence of which was one of the causes of some of the glitches last year, Mr Roy told journalists.

The candidates would have to reach their test-centers at least 1.5 hours prior to their slots. No belongings would be allowed inside the testing lab except a photo identity card, a printout of the CAT admit card and the CAT voucher. Washrooms would be out of bounds from 30 minutes before the test till the end of the test.

The check-in process would include one to go through biometric analysis (fingerprint machines, digital photographs). Last year, there were several instances of proxy testing which were weeded out due to biometric analysis done before the test. This year, the candidates who clear the entire admission process will be subjected to biometric analysis again after the final admission so as to avoid any such instances. We believe that security and fairness are of utmost importance to the conduct of the test, Mr Roy said.

Practice Test and Tutorial

A practice test and tutorial will be made available on the CAT website in a few days for candidates to develop comfort with the testing interface. The practice test will be 15 minutes and 12 questions long and can be taken as many times as one wishes to. The tutorial will be also delivered to candidates before the actual test.

The Test Interface

The CAT 2010 test interface will basically have two screens.

1. The Question Screen where you will have the questions followed by answer options
2. The Review Screen which will be a snapshot of the entire test showing questions that have been attempted, unanswered or marked for review.

One can easily toggle between these two screens.

The interface closely resembles that of CAT 2009. The one most important change is the modified placement of the ‘QUIT’ button. It is now placed on the Review screen only and not on the Question screen. So the chances that you will accidentally end are lowered. Even if you do accidentally click the QUIT button on the Review page, you will still be asked to confirm your decision once. However, ending the test early does not mean you can leave the test center before the official end time.

If you wish to undo an attempt on a question, you can click on the answer option again to put the question in the ‘unattempted’ category again. You can also mark questions so that you can come to them later in the test. However if you have marked questions that you have already attempted, they will still be evaluated. So marking a question does not mean that it will be untouched during the scoring process.

The Review screen clearly demarcates the completed, complete and marked questions. One can jump to any question by double clicking on the question number. Options allow you to view only the incomplete questions or only the marked questions.

Test pattern, Marking scheme

There will be 60 questions in the test divided into three sections — Quantitative Ability, Verbal Ability and Data Interpretation.

Asked if the sections would be demarcated from each other, Mr Roy said, The sections are not demarcated as of now, but, if the IIMs demand it, it will be done.

You will get +3 for each correct answer and -1 for each incorrect answer. Unattempted questions will not fetch any negative marks.

Contingency planning

In case of power failure or system shutdown or missing graphs in questions, the candidate will be allotted a new computer terminal and the test will resume from the point where it had aborted.

If you are unlucky enough to experience major disruptions during the test, you will be allowed to take the test again within the CAT window (October 27 to November 24). Gaps have been left in between the testing days to accommodate such cases.

After 33 years of paper based testing, CAT moved to the computer based format for the first time in 2009. Yes, there were certain errors in the process last time around. To get a candidate’s perspective, we have gone through many of the blogs and have used the feedback to cut down on the errors this time around. But with the test being conducted in 33 cities across 78 centers, in 247 labs and 9,000 plus systems in a window period of 20 days, we cannot say that it will be a completely glitch-free test, said Mr Roy explaining the need for contingency planning.

Non Disclosure Agreement

The non disclosure agreement which prohibits candidates from revealing CAT questions will stay this year too. According to Mr Roy, Prometric has reported cases of question leakage to the IIMs (in 2009) and it is in their jurisdiction to take any further action against the concerned people.

Almost all the questions (that were leaked) on the blogs were not even close to the actual questions which appeared in CAT and it’s humanly not possible to memorize the questions unless one appears solely for that purpose, he added.

When asked about dummy candidates from coaching institutes who appeared solely for the purpose of leaking questions to their students, Mr Roy said, Even if the questions ere leaked via internal mail lists, there won’t be any questions which are exactly the same in any two different sets. The only questions which will get repeated will be the anchor questions. The data available from the percentage of people attempting a particular question correctly or incorrectly will be used to design questions for further editions of the CAT.