14 DAY TRIAL // The online admission test for India's most prestigious business schools was rescheduled for thousands of candidates after many testing laboratories across the country had problems with computer viruses. The incident raises both legal and organizational issues.
The nationwide Common Admission Test (CAT) into the seven state-sponsored Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) is amongst the most competitive in the world. In 2008, almost 300,000 students competed for under 1,350 seats.
This year, the CAT was to be held online for the first time in history and Prometric, a reputed U.S.-based test administration company was contracted to organize it. The testing period was scheduled to be between November 28 and December 7, but many students will have to be rescheduled due to the malware problem.
"Some testing labs have been experiencing technical difficulties mainly due to viruses and malware. Prometric is continually assessing these labs and should testing not be possible for any session at specific labs (note that there could be several labs within one test centre and this is referred to as 'Site Code' on your Admit Card), affected candidates will be contacted by SMS and email. Rescheduling of these candidates will then be done and new appointments communicated again via SMS and email," a note on the official CAT website reads.
But even if it promises to try its best, the organizing company cannot guarantee that all affected students will be rescheduled within this year's testing window. This means that there is a chance that some of them will miss an entire year because of this incident.
Theoretically, candidates who missed the test because of these issues will be informed about their re-scheduled test in 48 hours. If that doesn't happen, they are asked to call 1800 103 9293. The same number can be used to arrange changes in location, time and date.
IDG reports that a number of 47 testing labs experienced malware problems in the first day of the testing period alone. Furthermore, Kapil Sibal, India's Minister for Human Resource Development, estimated the number of affected candidates to have been 8,000 from a total of 45,000 during the first three days. The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party issued a statement calling the problems shameful for a country that is internationally recognized for its IT resources.