Dear Dr. Kapoor, We write this letter to you after having patiently waited for days for the CAT 2014 results to be declared and then to get a word from you on the exact date of announcement of CAT results. Though you may not like much of what follows, we trust you to empathize with us, as we have empathized with you thus far. There are disturbing corollaries which can be derived from this inordinate delay - I. Severe lack of management skills in those who run (or serve) the (arguably) best management institutions of India: a) You have not worked backwards from the target because you never gave yourself a target in the first place. “Third week of December” was no exact date – it was fluid. It implies that in the very first place, you expected things to go wrong. We trust you to have done certain dry runs and pilots before giving the contract to TCS. What then placed seeds of doubts in your mind? Surely something was amiss and you chose to ignore it - the chalta hai attitude seems to have made its way into the offices of the IIMs. b) Even right now (22nd December 2014, well into the first day of the 4th week of Dec), the website says “Release of Results – Third week of December 2014”. Is the result going to be declared in the past through some time gadget? These are mere basics of management which haven’t been followed. If you cross the deadline, update the schedule. At this rate, with so many logical flaws in the process itself, CAT will have to do away with the Logical Reasoning section in the paper. c) What compounds the intensity of the lapse is the fact that CAT is now online. When processes go online, you expect them to become more efficient. We fail to understand what can possibly delay the results when all you got to do is run two algorithms – one to calculate the scores and the other to normalize them across the four slots. When you make statements like “we want to be very sure this time” – does it mean you manually check the outputs of the algorithms – each one of them?! All you needed to do was take a simple random sample and verify if the results are correct. II. Callous lack of transparency in the system, to the dismay of the candidates a) Your esteemed institution is still making submissions to the courts of law trying to prove that the results of CAT 2013 were correct and the normalization was not skewed in favor of any slot (s). As managers of CAT, the least we could have expected you to do was to learn from past mistakes. This year, it was so hoped, with a new vendor in place, the process will become more transparent. It was a shock to read your notification which had a cursory and casual mention of “normalization” – that it will be similar to the practice adopted for other large scale examinations like GATE! If the formula was in place, why not reveal it to everyone? You will anyway have to do it to the courts after the results of CAT 2014 are out. b) It is a tragedy of sorts that even right now the candidates are looking forward to a date for THE DATE. You are about to announce the date for the results which means even right now you don’t have the results with you. So much for CAT going digital! c) The apprehensions and speculations are directly proportional to the time you take to publish the results. There are genuine concerns now in the minds of the aspirants that something has gone awry with the data or the server or the algorithm and you are busy doing some “patch-up” to save face. How, sir, do you intend to dispel these doubts? d) It is as important to be seen as fair as it is to be fair. On this count, you must admit gracefully, you have failed miserably. With one year of hard work and the rest of our careers at stake, we want to be assured the processes are fair and there are no acts of omission or commission, done intentionally or inadvertently. We don’t mind even if you admit that there are incurable bugs in the system and call for a re-examination. Just let us know, please. e) There are websites which have managed to increase their traffic by simply speculating on the date of the result. One of them went to the ludicrous extent of speculating whether the IIMs are delaying the results because they are implementing “six sigma” in the process of evaluation! We need not have wasted time on such speculation, had you announced yourself what is the date of declaration of results and what has caused the delay. III. The philosophy of going online for the sake of going online a) It is time your team goes back to the drawing board and introspects over what exactly was the reason for digitizing a system which seemed working rather fine till then? We remember you cited these two reasons – 1) Flexibility to the students to appear at slots of their convenience 2) Gradually making CAT as standardized as the GMAT & GRE In 2014, there were just 4 slots on two days. There goes the flexibility factor. You made a statement yourself this year that CAT is not like the standardized test. The only difference from the paper pencil OMR version is that here you take the test on the computer. So, the two objectives stand defeated in 2014. Why mend that which isn’t broken?! If it was a pencil paper test, we need not even have waited for the results to be declared – we would have gone home with the question paper and we would have known the very next day what our scores are and whether we may be through or not. Perhaps the only benefit of an online CAT is that it saves paper. Please let us know if there is any other. b) Like Indian agriculture is a gamble in the monsoons, we know writing CAT is also a gamble in the month of November. There are slots which are easy and there are slots which are tough. So we hope that your esoteric methods of normalization remove this anomaly from the results. It would be much better to show, through sample calculations, how you “normalize” what is clearly not normal. We hold nothing against you. In all likelihood the fault may be that of the new vendor you have hired this year. May be it is an “act of God” that prevents you from doing the needful. Mostly likely, like most of us, you may also be blaming “the system” for the delay. But dear Dr. Kapoor, you are not like most of us. You are in-charge of the examination system that selects (arguably) the best managers of India, and therefore we grieve for the diminished managerial standards that are applied to this system. We are not personae non gratae – we are the aspirants who have burnt the proverbial midnight oil to crack CAT. The Supreme Court in 2010 remarked that something was rotten in the Allahabad High Court. We hope you take remedial measures in time to prevent a similar remark being made regarding the IIM CAT. This open letter comes in the interest of the CAT and those who aspired to crack it. We have already written CAT 14 and we will try to accept the results that are about to come. We write this in the interest of those who will write CAT 2015. When the results have been declared and the dust has settled, please take time out to analyze the last five years of CAT. Either give us an online system that works or take us back to the paper era… With regards, CAT 2014 aspirants
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 09:10:03 +0000
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