For the first time CAT, the only gateway to IIMs was conducted online. Online tests begun this Saturday i.e. 28th Nov, but unfortunately the server did not respond at many test centers. This debarred many students from appearing the test on that day and their test had to be postponed till further notice. All those students will be given fresh password for test. The contract for all the technical look-after was given to Prometric, a US based firm.
The way technical glitches appeared has raised various questions over the preparations. The main question is “Whether proper performance testing was not performed before going live?”. But soon a statement came from Director of IIM-A that Virus attack was the main cause for all the technical glitches. Wow, that’s for is hilarious. Does Mr. Samir Barua mean that server suffered from virus attack. If it is true then it again raises many questions over the environment used for setting up the server and deployment of system. If virus can so easily infect their servers then who knows there were no worms or Trojans which leaked data from the servers. This was quite silly for such prestigious institution like IIMs. The two virus identified in their system are ‘Conflicer’ and ‘W32 Nimda’ . They are making effort to quarantine the virus.
Anyways, for those guys who were not able to give exams, they should not worry. Just utilize this time preparing for the exam. Hopefully the date will be informed soon. The pattern of the question, as told by many of my friends, was easy this time. There were 60 question (20-20-20 for English, DI and LR each). The level was easy this time. The cutoff is expected to go much higher this year. All the best to all the remaining candidates.
