The Common Admission Test (CAT), which began in December, officially ended on Sunday with the Indian Institutes of Management declaring the scores of lakhs of candidates who took the entrance examination. Of the 2.41 lakh students who sat for the exam, 11 of them scored a perfect cent percentile; in absolute numbers, they all were marked close to 300 out of 450.

IIM-Ahmedabad convenor Satish Deodhar remained incommunicado. If some were happy with their absolute percentile , several students complained they were not.

Several students plan to file right to information (RTI) applications . “I expected to get a lot more that what I got. I am sure there was some problem with the assessment,” said a Chennai-based candidate. His feelings were shared by many. A heated discussion on students’ scores and their expectations was live all of Sunday on a popular MBA site, Pagalguy. Candidates also spoke of how they found it difficult to access CAT results. Scores were to be declared at 3 pm, but candidates could finally see their scorecards on the site only by 6 pm as the computer servers could not shoulder the traffic.

As reported earlier by TOI, IIMs did not give out call letters this time with the scores. As an admission chairman said, “We got the scorecards from IIM-A only on Saturday. We started processing all the information based on our selection criteria after that. We will give out call letters by either Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning.” IIM-A , which coordinated the CAT and also manages the admission for IIM-Shillong , put out the list of short-listed candidates , for both the campuses.

IIM-A has called 1,200 candidates for its 409 seats and IIMShillong has shorlisted 1,000 management aspirants.

Interestingly, IIM-A’s call letters only mentions a date for a personal interview; there was no clarity on whether the premier management institute had decided to do away with essay writing, a component it introduced when group discussion was done away with.

Source: www.economictimes.indiatimes.com