An early morning dose of 440 volts ran down my spine when I dragged my drowsy eyes on the front page of TimeofIndia. The headline read-CAT to be held online from November 2009: IIM. And I said to myself -nothing. So finally it has happened. At par with the other global examinations for graduates applying for B-Schools, in India CAT is synonymous to GMAT multiplied a million times in terms of difficulty, prestige and desire. I know it because I have appeared for it twice, both attempts failed miserably. However, this year the exam goes ahead to adapt the online format being followed by other well known tests like GRE, GMAT , IELTS and TOEFL.The problem however is the format that is being speculated. Unlike GMAT or GRE, CAT used to be a one day in a year affair (more like a annual festival for veterans like me). But with the current scenario, it will be impossible for CAT to be held on a single date. Primarily because every year hundreds of thousands aspirants appear for it. The numbers speak for themselves. 2007-2.3 lakh (230k)appeared and this year the estimated figure will be almost 3 lakhs (300k).

With that many students hopeful to appear online simultaneously, the immediate pressure is on the infrastructure required to conduct an online test of that proportion. Not only providing enough machines for the examinees spread across different centres in the country, but also the subsequent evaluation process. In case the test has to be made available on the same day, at the same time, the servers have to be robust enough to support the procedure(given the fame that IIM servers hold during the results announcement time that sounds a huge task to do). And as predicted, this procedure is going to be outsourced to a third party vendor, however IIM will have the supreme authority.

Consequently CAT will no longer be a one-day affair and shall now span across a set of dates in a month or months. Yet another addition to the format is the single paper format is now being modified into different papers similar to GMAT( which actually boils down to the same stuff coz there were different sections previously, now it’s papers.) But unlike GMAT, the results here will not be announced instantly. So there’s still the scenario of the almost two months of dreaded wait.

Other issues facing the exam’s new format might be Security. The stringent security policy which has been synonymous with CAT for so long, might face a big question mark now that the test arrangements are being done by a third party vendor. Not only tha, how secure would be the online security is another question. Seems like all coaching classes are soon gonna install computers and start simulating online mock CATs and come November, we might actually get to see the very first online CAT. Meowww!!

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