CAT-2011 Contributor Faced Technological Issues

Since CAT started there was no fatal technical failures reported in the record. But this year it is not completely lacking defect . During the exam time on October 31st, computers crashed and the screen colorants were found playing hooky in a data interpretation question at the Nirmala Devi College centre in Mumbai. Though the time lost was finally made up but, this had effected the environment of stress and reduced the concentration levels for the candidates. When the contributor had proceeded to answer question number 14 in the first section and hit NEXT, the screen had changed to a question which consisted of a Bar graph with bar of 2 colors which had to be black and other as grey, but the grey bar was not visible instead had a clean blank space. It is explained that the particular question required a comparison of the data representing two bars with 2 different colors.

When this problem was informed to the representative he looked puzzled and in-turn called out for an other representative . They had together demonstrated the system but was no worth trying it again. Later with an help of instruction via phone call they could restart the Computer . And the contributor was given an other terminal to continue the exam, by the issues it was already a loss of 7-8 minutes whereas it was just 36 minutes left to complete the first session. This was just a start of issues in the examination, not an end too. In the last 35 minutes of the second section, the computer screens of Testing labs were spotless for almost 7-8 minutes. Again a contributor was asked to change the terminal by the three representatives. Not just one but now it was more students who faced this problem. When the representative was informed he just asked them to restart the system. Some how the exams were finally finished with no more issues.

When the Prometric was asked for the response, the Managing director Soumitra Roy said “Prometric has built in excess capacity in all locations for any unforeseen technical issues that cannot be resolved by the on-site engineer within a time. In such cases, the candidate will be moved to another workstation and the test will resume from the point where it was left by the candidate, with no loss in testing time”.

There are some more days to go for the end of CAT 2011. Is it the end of issues that a candidate would face? With all the responsibility owned by the Prometric, it also informs candidates not to panic in such situation, instead immediately inform the representatives and change the Terminal.