It is the time of the year when the young minds of this country are fully immersed in their books mugging hard for all the competitive examinations that are about to come in month of Nov. The most important and most prestigious among them is the Combined Aptitude Test or CAT. This is the exam that will help many to take the career escalator. Approximately 2.5 lakh students are about to give this exam and preparing for this exam is a grueling task, for people who have already passed their graduation / post-graduation have to go back and open their wren'n'martins' and 10th standard math books and mug them up. 
After all that is what CAT asks you. And you have so many coaching classes willing to help you out to get trained on solving these templatized problems using "shortcuts" and "tips and tricks" that they preach. And after so many years of training for CAT many institutes have sprung up. Chief among them are IMS, TIME, Career Launcher, Pegasus and what not. Also there are message boards to collaborate on MBA preparation like pagalguy.com and totalgadha.com. Through their money making schemes they are trying to hit the aspirants top, bottom and center trying to squeeze out every penny from their pockets. In these situations, any utterance by some IIM professor on the changes in CAT pattern is taken as an oracle and publicized by these coaching classes claiming that they are well prepared to help their students out in tackling this new situation. The whole aim is to instill this fear in the mind of the aspirant that dream might remain a dream and not turn into a reality. After all that's what they are here for. Aren't they? So when one of the IIM dons mentioned that they are thinking of taking the CAT online from next year, our coaching classes carefully deleted "thinking" and went ahead creating posters boldly proclaiming 'CAT to go ONLINE starting 2009.' But I would like to let the aspirants know that ye nahi ho sakta. Here's why.
Computers even though accessible to everyone of you who is reading the blog might not be accessible to the Indian 'have-not'. These 'have-not' comprise a large section of population who come from the flood plains of Kosi to the hilly areas of Ladakh, to the average construction worker in the big cities. Many of them might not have the means and money to access the computer but they definitely have the aspiration to make it big in life. And no exam in India can deny them this right if they are capable. And so if a siginficant chunk of the country can not prepare for such kind of an examination owing to the high barriers of prepartion cost it won't be a true competition.
Secondly, an MBA exam that comes closest to CAT in terms of importance is the GMAT. GMAT is a computer based program, also called Computer Adaptive Test. The idea behind these exams is that the level of difficulty of every question changes with how the examinee answered the previous question and hence necessitates the use of computers. Now in case it is planned to implement CAT on computers there will be two ways in which such a exam can be handled, each with its own issues.
In case IIMs plan to implement the examination on same date it will have issues with implementing the exam. From where can you get 2.5 lakh computers for a day with all the required softwares installed? And in case there is a glitch with one of the computers how do you deal with that situation Yes, yes. I can hear you people saying 'Is tereh CAT nahi ho sakta'. And it is actually not possible to implement such kind of an examination.
The other option with IIMs is that they go for exams that are scheduled just like the GMAT where you take your date and go for exams and get a score on that date. However even GMAC had to face certain issues with their method of testing after all the world is not an ideal place. So imagine what will happen in case you have 2.3 lakh people giving exam round the year. No soon a person comes out of the test center he will be trounced by his friends wanting to know 'live questions' and he will have to comply. That way the life cycle of a live question will be very short and it will be very difficult for the IIMs to go and create new questions every day.
Given so much of trouble my guess is that IIMs will not never ever change the way in which the exams will be conducted and will try the time tested menthod of bringing variations in the pattern to seperate the chaff from hay.
So gentlemen, stop worrying about online / offline CAT and start preparing.
After all that is what CAT asks you. And you have so many coaching classes willing to help you out to get trained on solving these templatized problems using "shortcuts" and "tips and tricks" that they preach. And after so many years of training for CAT many institutes have sprung up. Chief among them are IMS, TIME, Career Launcher, Pegasus and what not. Also there are message boards to collaborate on MBA preparation like pagalguy.com and totalgadha.com. Through their money making schemes they are trying to hit the aspirants top, bottom and center trying to squeeze out every penny from their pockets. In these situations, any utterance by some IIM professor on the changes in CAT pattern is taken as an oracle and publicized by these coaching classes claiming that they are well prepared to help their students out in tackling this new situation. The whole aim is to instill this fear in the mind of the aspirant that dream might remain a dream and not turn into a reality. After all that's what they are here for. Aren't they? So when one of the IIM dons mentioned that they are thinking of taking the CAT online from next year, our coaching classes carefully deleted "thinking" and went ahead creating posters boldly proclaiming 'CAT to go ONLINE starting 2009.' But I would like to let the aspirants know that ye nahi ho sakta. Here's why.Computers even though accessible to everyone of you who is reading the blog might not be accessible to the Indian 'have-not'. These 'have-not' comprise a large section of population who come from the flood plains of Kosi to the hilly areas of Ladakh, to the average construction worker in the big cities. Many of them might not have the means and money to access the computer but they definitely have the aspiration to make it big in life. And no exam in India can deny them this right if they are capable. And so if a siginficant chunk of the country can not prepare for such kind of an examination owing to the high barriers of prepartion cost it won't be a true competition.
Secondly, an MBA exam that comes closest to CAT in terms of importance is the GMAT. GMAT is a computer based program, also called Computer Adaptive Test. The idea behind these exams is that the level of difficulty of every question changes with how the examinee answered the previous question and hence necessitates the use of computers. Now in case it is planned to implement CAT on computers there will be two ways in which such a exam can be handled, each with its own issues.
In case IIMs plan to implement the examination on same date it will have issues with implementing the exam. From where can you get 2.5 lakh computers for a day with all the required softwares installed? And in case there is a glitch with one of the computers how do you deal with that situation Yes, yes. I can hear you people saying 'Is tereh CAT nahi ho sakta'. And it is actually not possible to implement such kind of an examination.
The other option with IIMs is that they go for exams that are scheduled just like the GMAT where you take your date and go for exams and get a score on that date. However even GMAC had to face certain issues with their method of testing after all the world is not an ideal place. So imagine what will happen in case you have 2.3 lakh people giving exam round the year. No soon a person comes out of the test center he will be trounced by his friends wanting to know 'live questions' and he will have to comply. That way the life cycle of a live question will be very short and it will be very difficult for the IIMs to go and create new questions every day.
Given so much of trouble my guess is that IIMs will not never ever change the way in which the exams will be conducted and will try the time tested menthod of bringing variations in the pattern to seperate the chaff from hay.
So gentlemen, stop worrying about online / offline CAT and start preparing.
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