It was a big news way back in 2008 that the next CAT will be conducted online. All big and small training institutions started preparing for the big change. However the news is that the CAT in 2009 may not be online and will be conducted in same old way with paper and pencil.

The IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management) was busy setting up the stage for online CAT this year. Tenders were called from many companies and the feasibility was worked out. Many big brands filled the tenders and wanted to be the part of online CAT. ETS Prometric (Well known online test and rating company), Pearson VUE (again a big name in this field), Eduquity Career Technologies and Attest (subsidiary of Aptech) were shortlisted.

Pankaj Chandra, director, IIM Bangalore told that the probability of CAT going online this year is low. He said “We don’t know yet if CAT would go online. We are in the process of finalising the vendors. In the next few weeks, we will take a call if we will go online this year or not.”

Taking CAT online would involve a requirement of huge number of computer terminals each connected to a centerlised server from where the questions will be fetched. The candidate will answer the questions and the result will get stored int he server right away. It would be in somewhat like we offer free mock tests on our web site www.centpercent.com.

It is very clear that conducting CAT online is not an easy task. Lot of planing and other details have to put in place before taking a dip. This all involves time and infrastructure.

Pankaj Chandra said, “To go online or not would be decided in April. We still would have eight months, which hopefully will be enough for us. If not, we will go for the usual paper-pencil test, where we are familiar with the entire logistics of printing, advertising and hiring of rental places for writing the test.”

Though getting finances and support from industry is not a difficult for IIMs, still making more than 300,ooo candidates take online exam a single dat at same time requires good lot of infrastructure in terms of computers, network connectivity, bandwidth and lot of core planning and this all is not possible in few months.

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