CAT aspirants are expected to devote hours and hours of hard work if they wish to get anywhere close to their dream b-school. Well, it really shouldnt be too much to expect coaching institutes to provide better facilities for students taking the practice tests that are conducted. The news that CAT might be a computer based test had been floating around for close to a year before it got confirmed a month or so back. MBA coaching institutes such as TIME and Career Launcher (CL) do need to provide better facilities if this years CAT takers are to get reasonable practice before the big day.

CL has announced that it will be conducting the first ever open online Mock CAT from July 25 to August 1. The test will be open for non CL students also. Thats a good initiative given that TIME has conducted only one online practice test so far and IMS is yet to begin its test series. Anyhow, I thought I should investigate how online tests have been conducted so far given that most coaching institutes had earlier explained to me their plans to provide facilities for this year’s CAT.

The first two CL online practice tests were conducted without any problems and most students are quite happy with the test facilities and questions.Chintan Navin Wora, a student at the CL Dadar center said, However, these tests were not supervised and students were also allowed to take their bags inside the test room. If the tests are not supervised then there is no point in calling them as proctored tests. Hopefully CAT aspirants are being honest here and are also not finding out in advance about the tests before taking them.

CL Proc Mock 3 is currently on and students have encountered issues while taking the test. Ameya Pimpalgaonkar, a CL student said, “At my center in Pune on July 25, the network was extremely slow, a pop out was appearing every five-ten minutes, scrolling was a problem and students were repeatedly getting logged out. One student left in frustration as he could not connect to the network.” Girish Hiranand, a student registered at the CL Dadar center in Mumbai said that due to network problems he was unable to take his test on July 26. A faculty at the center said, It was a local internet subscriber problem and occurred only at the Dadar center. It turned out to be a problem only for two students. According to Alpesh Chaudhari, a CL Pune student, the Reliance web world center where he took the test was noisy as other customers were busy browsing the internet. He also said that the network was slow and fonts were variable through the test.

TIME also conducted its first online test (AIMCAT 101 over an extended period of 20 days. Ameya who has registered for the TIME AIMCATs said that there was a time loss of 20-25 seconds while clicking through to the next question. There were other issues also at the Vikhroli center in Mumbai where Shashank Prabhu gave the test which started two hours late. While most students were satisfied with the infrastructure provided, Shashank’s keyboard and mouse took turns in acting up. There was also a huge variation in the number of questions he had attempted and that shown in the test results. TIME on its part has promised all students who registered for the test series that they will be able to write this test which was available for only full time students. However, this does not benefit the full time students in any manner. In Jaipur at the Lalkothi center, all the computers had Linux installed on them and students could not see questions properly because of the screen’s poor resolution. Abhishek Chopra, a student registered here commented, “No technician was available to help students and people at the center were complaining throughout the test.”

There should be a lot more clarity once the CAT notification is released sometime in August. Hopefully the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) will release a demo test or some additional details regarding how the test will be conducted. Coaching institutes should meanwhile definitely strive to ensure that a quality testing environment is provided so that students do not feel shortchanged.