Prometric owns up to technical lapse in online CAT

Posted Tue, 03 Apr 2012 07:10:34 -0000

After much hullabaloo and rounds of accusations and clarifications, Prometric finally came clear on Monday accepting a technical glitch on their part regarding the wrong marking of CAT scores in Nov 2009.

Though they had been defending themselves all this while Charles Kernan, chief operating officer of Prometric confessed in simple words saying "It was a lapse on our part."

Te technical failure during the CAT exam meant that thousands of students could not take their test exams on the scheduled day due to sudden server failure.

Prometric is an American firm which had been given the responsibility of conducting the first online CAT exam in India. About the server failure in the same Kernan said "We have learnt several lessons from our experience. There was a lot of local hardware being used and more needed to be done to secure public networks."

He further added that they needed to discuss the possibilities of improvement with IIMs on all level from the application procedure to the conduction of the tests.

After the big mess and the controversy afterwards it was being reported that the contract of Prometric as the testing agency for CAT was being reviewed by the IIMs. Clarifying the same Kernan said "There is no reason not to be planning to go forward."

The stand of Prometric on their scoring procedure continues to be the same though the CAT students across the nation are highly disappointed with their CAT scores and are blaming Prometric for the same. In their defense Prometric says that they have used an international standard of marking and for transparency they have even put up the entire scoring procedure on the website for students to see.