The declaration of the Common Admission Test (CAT) 2011 results brings an end to Prof Janakiraman Moorthy’s tenure as CAT Convenor for 2011. In the hot seat for probably the last time, Prof Moorthy spoke to PaGaLGuY about the CAT results and more.

The CAT website again gave problems, as every year…

The server did not crash. It is slow but as the day progresses it will ease out. The slow down was expected as there are always too many candidates trying to get their results at the same time. It takes a while for the data to correlate and the score card to be arrived at.

A number of CAT takers are not happy with their results. Any way of redressal?

The scores are final. They have been derived at after a series of checks, they cannot be wrong.

But there are candidates who feel they performed better than their scores?

One has to understand how scores are worked out. If a candidate does well, it does not always mean his score will be excellent. Scores are relative; it could be that the candidate has marked the option (answer) which he thought was the right one, but the option might be the closest, not the correct one.

Is it possible that candidates can approach the Indian Institutes of Management for a rechecking of sorts?

No, like I said, the scores are final.

But you did admit in an earlier interview that a few questions were wrong?

I would not call them wrong questions, they have been interpreted as wrong. If there are any issues they are solved psychometrically.

Can you define psychometrics for our audience please?

I am not a psychometrician, you have to look it up on the Web.

Then at least explain normalisation the word still makes people angry?

It is all on the website but if you want me to simplify: Different papers are set for different days of the exam. And all these papers have different questions, though some questions may be common. The performance to these questions help us know the difficulty level of the paper. So, all papers are brought to the same level of difficulty and scores are given accordingly.

How many 100 percentilers this year?

Nine.

Are you saying the paper was easy?

No, the level of difficulty level was the same as last year. However, this year, candidates seemed more ready for the changes, so the paper may have seemed easier. Fewer sections and time limits made it more organised.

What are your plans post the results?

Have been up for most of the night checking the website, so will take some rest. As for a holiday, if my institute allows it, I’ll perhaps go on one.