The advent of the computer-based Common Admissions Test (CAT) has brought about many changes in the way MBA aspirants prepare and strategize for the test. This has led to a complete turn-around in the way test preparatory institutes deliver CAT coaching to MBA aspirants. Mock tests are now computer-based and the sectional tests have been ported onto websites.

The computer-based test has also prevented the test-takers from taking the question papers back home. This has increased the number of teachers from coaching classes who are taking the test — as they need to be clued-in to each of the 40 slots’ question patterns. If you multiply that number with the number of small and large coaching institutes scattered across the country, and also add the franchisees of all the large coaching institutes, it amounts to a few hundred dummy test-takers who are coaching institute teachers. This is an obvious concern — what impact do these ‘power test-takers’ have on the normalisation process and do they spoil the chances of serious MBA aspirants of getting a b-school interview call?

The buzz on the discussion forums is that MBA aspirants are not comfortable sharing their slots with some of the better performing test-takers in the mocks. The reason rooted in a general apprehension about how the CAT or a CAT-based mock is equated across slots. If a slot has a large number of test-takers, chances that they will solve the ‘anchor questions’ or the ‘equating items’ successfully are high. This will automatically make the equating process deem that slot’s paper as easier and push up the cutoffs.

As seen in CAT 2009, a difference of one mark (out of a maximum possible score of 450) can make or break lives.

So somebody taking the test just for experiencing it AND performing well in it might actually end up denying a serious aspirant a GD-PI call. Such power test-takers often do not apply to any of the IIMs during the registration process so that other serious candidates can get the call ahead of them. Yet they play a spoiler at b-schools which have pre-declared qualifying cutoffs. For example, IIM Bangalore this year requires at least 90 percentile score in the overall as well as verbal section, and minimum 80 percentile in the quant and data interpretation sections. Every well-performing CAT-taker from a coaching institute scoring above those percentiles denies a chance to a serious MBA aspirant. And for several test-takers from coaching institutes, scoring well is a necessary requirement in order to keep their reputation, brand and credentials as a good teacher intact.

In short, that favorite teacher at your coaching institute might just be responsible for spoiling your chances to get a top b-school call. Howzzat?

To get a deeper insight, I spoke with a few well-known names in the CAT coaching business and here is how they defend the coaching institutes. ARKS Srinivas ; Arun Sharma ; Manish Harodia, and Parag Chitale – and below is what they have to say.

ARKS Srinivas, Director of TIME Kolkata feels that the serial CAT-takers and the dummy candidates do not really make any difference to the genuine candidates. He says, “Most of the dummy test-takers who take CAT usually excel in only one section. Like a quant faculty will spend over 90 minutes working only on the quant section. So if you are looking at the overall score, they do not provide any competition. If you take all the CAT takers, there would be 70 to 100 people who are like that. Of these, the ones who take the test and get a good percentile overall are only about 10 to 15. This is a very small number looking at the figure of 2 lakh candidates taking the test. The ace b-schools anyway call three or four times more candidates than their actual in-take capacity. Then it all depends on the interview and GD.”

Arun Sharma — an IIM Bangalore alumnus and author of several CAT books — says, A few hundred people taking the test just to review it should not affect the chances of a serious aspirant so much. The sample size of the people taking CAT is large enough to reduce the effect. If it were taken by a small number of people, there would be fluctuations which would indeed affect an aspirant’s chances drastically by skewing the percentiles. Also, while calculating the percentiles, those who score exceptionally high are the outliers who fall in the +3 sigma range thus having no effect on the percentiles of serious aspirants.

Parag Chitale, founder-CEO of CPLC Institute, Mumbai has a different opinion. In the case of serial CAT takers, it depends on how they approach the paper. I am myself a serial CAT taker but, I make sure that I don’t mark the answers even if I solve the questions so that the chances of a serious aspirant are not affected. If someone is doing it then it might affect the chances of the serious aspirant. But we have seen that such instances are few and so, it should not worry someone that much, he says.

When asked about whether well-scoring dummy-candidates would affect the equating across slots, he added, “As it is not exactly known how the normalisation is done, I cannot really comment how can it affect the chances of a normal aspirant.”

Manish Harodia, Director of Tathagat, Pune says, Few people intentionally take CAT to generate hype about their scores and as a marketing gimmick. Those who want to just analyse the paper can take a look at it without actually marking the answers. I took the CAT this year and could attempt 58 questions but then, I marked only 30. I seriously believe that this kind of test-taking practices (one in which dummy candidates try to score in the paper) affect an aspirant’s chances to some extent. Also, some coaching institutes have in their job description a certain requirement which makes it mandatory for the faculty to get a certain percentile. This is the reason why teachers appear for CAT. But even this can be countered so that they don’t really have to appear for CAT. The test can be simulated in various ways. The excuses given by the coaching classes to justify such acts are pretty lame and the behaviour is unpardonable.