reconducting the cat 2006 paper
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To,
The Honorable Chief Justice of India,
Supreme Court of India,
New Delhi.
Subject: Re-conducting the Common Admission Test (CAT)
Sir,
This is an appeal regarding the anomalies in the most prestigious Management Entrance Examination held in India, the Common Admission Test (from hereon, referred to as CAT).
Sir, we undersigned represent a group of students who undertook the aforesaid entrance examination conducted on the 19th of November this year. Being one of the most respected entrance examination for any programme run in the country, no anomalies could have been expected. But, the question paper belied our expectations. There were gross anomalies in the CAT, something unexpected by the student community, the academia and people from other walks of life.
The errors in Combined Admission Test (CAT) 2006, were as follows .
Question papers were divided into four sets - 111, 222, 333, 444. The only difference was that the questions appeared in jumbled order.
.In set number 333, Question number 69 (page C 29) said "A survey was conducted of 100 people to find out whether they had read recent issues of Golmal, a monthly magazine. The summarized information regarding readership in three months is given below: Only September: 18; September but not August: 23; September and July: 8; September: 8; July: 48; July and August 10; None of the three months: 24. What is the number of surveyed people who have read exactly two consecutive issues (out of three)?.. "These are not dates but data element in the question.
The same question in set 444 (question number 73) and 222 (question number 59) reads "September: 28"in place of "September: 8", whereas in set 111 (question number 56) the figure is "September: 8"as it is in set 333.
This means half of the aspirants out of 1.91 lakh total candidates attempted the question having "September: 8"and the other half calculated the answer with "September: 28".
.The other ambiguity in quantitative aptitude was in a question about an airline having a free luggage allowance.
This had two sub questions but the right answer to one of these sub questions was not mentioned.
.Question number 30 of set 444 had only three options in the answer and none of them had the correct answer.
The same question in other sets had five choices with the correct option. Again, in the question number 56 in set 333, none of the answers in the five given options was correct.
Since all of these errors were unexpected, taking into consideration the prestige of the examination, a good number of students ended up putting a lot of time into solving those anomalous questions that produced no results. This resulted in a lot of time being wasted on questions which were generically erroneous and hence, a poor performance by a candidate. Further, some students did not even attempt these anomalous questions, due to sheer luck, which effectively gave them an advantage of 10-15 minutes, over a candidate who did attempt them. Further, even the errors were not consistent across various sets. Some sets had more errors than others did. In other words, some students were lucky to have sets with less errors and some unlucky to have sets with more errors. The erroneous questions were of worth 12 marks, which is huge.
The Cat Bulletin instruction says that there can only be one correct answer to each question. However, there was logical ambiguity, leading to insolvability of the question in one of the DI sets. In this logically ambiguous, and hence unsolvable question Question Number 1/16 /8/22 in Set 444/222/333/111 respectively (which had 2 possible correct answers), many students spent a good 10-12 minutes in trying to dig the logic of the question. This question was part of a set, which had 4 other questions as well. Many of those after cracking the logic of the set were halted by the ambiguity in one of the questions, and hence did not even attempt the other 4 questions of the set. Here again there were few students who got lucky and were not at all affected by presence of these unsolvable questions because they did not see/attempt them.
We can see that how 1 ambiguous/unsolvable questions changed the dynamics. A guy who spotted this ambiguity, (which should never have been there in the paper, but for the negligence of the IIMs) actually was put at a severe disadvantage. In this case, a good student would have easily suffered a loss of time of 7-15 minutes, and possibly a loss of 20 valuable marks, which would approximately amount to a drop of 4-5\%ile i.e a rank drop of about 7,600-9,500, which is humungous. The only fault of this student- he attempted an unsolvable/ambiguous question which had 2 possible correct options- a question which should not have been there in the first place. Considering that IIMs invite 2500-3000 people for interview calls, this possibly means a difference between getting and not-getting an IIM interview/GDPI call, and even calls from other colleges which accept Cat-score. Even if the student who suffered time-loss and marks loss on this question gets an interview call after any key correction remedy/concessions by the IIMs, the percentile loss will still have an adverse bearing on chances of getting final calls from the IIMs, MDI, IMI, Nirma and other institutes, since most colleges attach substantial (about 50-70) weightage to Cat in final selection criteria.
Hence we can infer that because of errors/inconsistencies/ambiguities, the whole process of identifying meritorious students got distorted. Instead, Luck played a huge role in this test, the result of which many good students will be left out, and many relatively undeserving ones will get interview calls, giving them a shot at final selection.
The IIMs have accepted the printing errors in the paper. Their take on logical ambiguity/insolvability of the DI question is not clear. They have formed a committee, which promised to come out with a solution/evaluation method to deal with errors in 2 weeks (More than 2 weeks have passed, and there still has not been any decision by the committee in this regard)
Anyways, no evaluation method can properly judge the mark loss of each and every student, because the time loss and questions missed just cannot be determined for every student. So any general formula that IIMs come up with will fail to address this. Different students must have suffered in different proportion, depending upon the time they spent/questions they attempted/question-set they had, so any blanket-solution will again bring luck into play.
That is the reason why we think that only a Cat-retest is a fair solution. All other measures will be unfair and would only do what the error-ridden paper did: Give an undue advantage to a certain segment of students, at the cost of others.
We would also want to bring to your kind notice, the fact that the day after the examination, the conducting authorities, the Indian Institutes of Management, have admitted to errors being there in the question paper. IIM-K chairperson (admission) P R Bhatt said the internal committee formed to look in to this issue is expected to submit a report within two weeks. The IIMs have announced that they will publish the key answers before the scores are announced. (Reference: print and electronic media ) We appreciate their taking up of the responsibility and admitting the anomalies. However, till today ( 07/12/06) committee formed by Indian Institute of Management has not come up with any decision. We fear that they might just come up with the results of this test, before they announce what were the remedial measures they took to undo the damage that the errors caused to the students.
We feel aggrieved and wronged due to the error-ridden Cat and subsequent inaction of the IIMs. We would request you to urgently and seriously look into the matter and direct the concerned authorities to re-conduct the aforesaid examination.
We had presented a memorandum to the concerned authorities, who have rejected this plea right at the outset. In fact, they had done so the very next day of the examination. But we wanted to do all the formalities first. Hence, we moved forth with the memorandum.
Since we have taken all the necessary steps, we believe that only you can help us with this stand that we have taken. We would also like to inform you that we have already written about the same to the His Excellency, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. and HRD ministry of India..
A good number of students are with us in this request for retest and to give credence to our stand, we have already started a signature campaign and also used the services of the internet. We have created the following pages on the URL of the websites:
Ref. (1) shouldtherebecatretest.blogspot.com
Ref (2) logicbehindthecatretest.blogspot.com
Ref (3) pagalguy.com ( thread should there be cat retest )
We have been receiving responses from students, people from the academia and other walks of life from across the country as well as the world. Most of these people are supporting our stand and requesting you to look into the matter and hopefully help in re-conducting the test.
As for our signature campaign, we have received over 1000 signatures in our city itself; and all these are from just the student community. We feel that if we conduct the same for people from other walks of life, we would get a three-fold or even bigger response, supporting our request. Due to the efforts of people of other cities across India, who share the same interest, we have been informed that the signature campaign has been gaining ground in those cities as well. Hence, this campaign is nationwide and not just constricted to a single city.
We are making all the efforts on our part, and if need be, we can produce those signatures to you, and to the authorities concerned to prove the strength vastness of our interest.
We would sincerely request you to look into the matter and help the entire student community by re-conducting the examination. This is not a request only from an individual. This request is from the entire student community across India. This is a call for justice and fairness in this democratic country. The future of more than 1 lakh students is at stake and, if we can say so, the future of India as well.
Yours sincerely,
Akhilesh Kumar Bajpai
(on behalf of all students)
DATE- 24th november
The Honorable Chief Justice of India,
Supreme Court of India,
New Delhi.
Subject: Re-conducting the Common Admission Test (CAT)
Sir,
This is an appeal regarding the anomalies in the most prestigious Management Entrance Examination held in India, the Common Admission Test (from hereon, referred to as CAT).
Sir, we undersigned represent a group of students who undertook the aforesaid entrance examination conducted on the 19th of November this year. Being one of the most respected entrance examination for any programme run in the country, no anomalies could have been expected. But, the question paper belied our expectations. There were gross anomalies in the CAT, something unexpected by the student community, the academia and people from other walks of life.
The errors in Combined Admission Test (CAT) 2006, were as follows .
Question papers were divided into four sets - 111, 222, 333, 444. The only difference was that the questions appeared in jumbled order.
.In set number 333, Question number 69 (page C 29) said "A survey was conducted of 100 people to find out whether they had read recent issues of Golmal, a monthly magazine. The summarized information regarding readership in three months is given below: Only September: 18; September but not August: 23; September and July: 8; September: 8; July: 48; July and August 10; None of the three months: 24. What is the number of surveyed people who have read exactly two consecutive issues (out of three)?.. "These are not dates but data element in the question.
The same question in set 444 (question number 73) and 222 (question number 59) reads "September: 28"in place of "September: 8", whereas in set 111 (question number 56) the figure is "September: 8"as it is in set 333.
This means half of the aspirants out of 1.91 lakh total candidates attempted the question having "September: 8"and the other half calculated the answer with "September: 28".
.The other ambiguity in quantitative aptitude was in a question about an airline having a free luggage allowance.
This had two sub questions but the right answer to one of these sub questions was not mentioned.
.Question number 30 of set 444 had only three options in the answer and none of them had the correct answer.
The same question in other sets had five choices with the correct option. Again, in the question number 56 in set 333, none of the answers in the five given options was correct.
Since all of these errors were unexpected, taking into consideration the prestige of the examination, a good number of students ended up putting a lot of time into solving those anomalous questions that produced no results. This resulted in a lot of time being wasted on questions which were generically erroneous and hence, a poor performance by a candidate. Further, some students did not even attempt these anomalous questions, due to sheer luck, which effectively gave them an advantage of 10-15 minutes, over a candidate who did attempt them. Further, even the errors were not consistent across various sets. Some sets had more errors than others did. In other words, some students were lucky to have sets with less errors and some unlucky to have sets with more errors. The erroneous questions were of worth 12 marks, which is huge.
The Cat Bulletin instruction says that there can only be one correct answer to each question. However, there was logical ambiguity, leading to insolvability of the question in one of the DI sets. In this logically ambiguous, and hence unsolvable question Question Number 1/16 /8/22 in Set 444/222/333/111 respectively (which had 2 possible correct answers), many students spent a good 10-12 minutes in trying to dig the logic of the question. This question was part of a set, which had 4 other questions as well. Many of those after cracking the logic of the set were halted by the ambiguity in one of the questions, and hence did not even attempt the other 4 questions of the set. Here again there were few students who got lucky and were not at all affected by presence of these unsolvable questions because they did not see/attempt them.
We can see that how 1 ambiguous/unsolvable questions changed the dynamics. A guy who spotted this ambiguity, (which should never have been there in the paper, but for the negligence of the IIMs) actually was put at a severe disadvantage. In this case, a good student would have easily suffered a loss of time of 7-15 minutes, and possibly a loss of 20 valuable marks, which would approximately amount to a drop of 4-5\%ile i.e a rank drop of about 7,600-9,500, which is humungous. The only fault of this student- he attempted an unsolvable/ambiguous question which had 2 possible correct options- a question which should not have been there in the first place. Considering that IIMs invite 2500-3000 people for interview calls, this possibly means a difference between getting and not-getting an IIM interview/GDPI call, and even calls from other colleges which accept Cat-score. Even if the student who suffered time-loss and marks loss on this question gets an interview call after any key correction remedy/concessions by the IIMs, the percentile loss will still have an adverse bearing on chances of getting final calls from the IIMs, MDI, IMI, Nirma and other institutes, since most colleges attach substantial (about 50-70) weightage to Cat in final selection criteria.
Hence we can infer that because of errors/inconsistencies/ambiguities, the whole process of identifying meritorious students got distorted. Instead, Luck played a huge role in this test, the result of which many good students will be left out, and many relatively undeserving ones will get interview calls, giving them a shot at final selection.
The IIMs have accepted the printing errors in the paper. Their take on logical ambiguity/insolvability of the DI question is not clear. They have formed a committee, which promised to come out with a solution/evaluation method to deal with errors in 2 weeks (More than 2 weeks have passed, and there still has not been any decision by the committee in this regard)
Anyways, no evaluation method can properly judge the mark loss of each and every student, because the time loss and questions missed just cannot be determined for every student. So any general formula that IIMs come up with will fail to address this. Different students must have suffered in different proportion, depending upon the time they spent/questions they attempted/question-set they had, so any blanket-solution will again bring luck into play.
That is the reason why we think that only a Cat-retest is a fair solution. All other measures will be unfair and would only do what the error-ridden paper did: Give an undue advantage to a certain segment of students, at the cost of others.
We would also want to bring to your kind notice, the fact that the day after the examination, the conducting authorities, the Indian Institutes of Management, have admitted to errors being there in the question paper. IIM-K chairperson (admission) P R Bhatt said the internal committee formed to look in to this issue is expected to submit a report within two weeks. The IIMs have announced that they will publish the key answers before the scores are announced. (Reference: print and electronic media ) We appreciate their taking up of the responsibility and admitting the anomalies. However, till today ( 07/12/06) committee formed by Indian Institute of Management has not come up with any decision. We fear that they might just come up with the results of this test, before they announce what were the remedial measures they took to undo the damage that the errors caused to the students.
We feel aggrieved and wronged due to the error-ridden Cat and subsequent inaction of the IIMs. We would request you to urgently and seriously look into the matter and direct the concerned authorities to re-conduct the aforesaid examination.
We had presented a memorandum to the concerned authorities, who have rejected this plea right at the outset. In fact, they had done so the very next day of the examination. But we wanted to do all the formalities first. Hence, we moved forth with the memorandum.
Since we have taken all the necessary steps, we believe that only you can help us with this stand that we have taken. We would also like to inform you that we have already written about the same to the His Excellency, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. and HRD ministry of India..
A good number of students are with us in this request for retest and to give credence to our stand, we have already started a signature campaign and also used the services of the internet. We have created the following pages on the URL of the websites:
Ref. (1) shouldtherebecatretest.blogspot.com
Ref (2) logicbehindthecatretest.blogspot.com
Ref (3) pagalguy.com ( thread should there be cat retest )
We have been receiving responses from students, people from the academia and other walks of life from across the country as well as the world. Most of these people are supporting our stand and requesting you to look into the matter and hopefully help in re-conducting the test.
As for our signature campaign, we have received over 1000 signatures in our city itself; and all these are from just the student community. We feel that if we conduct the same for people from other walks of life, we would get a three-fold or even bigger response, supporting our request. Due to the efforts of people of other cities across India, who share the same interest, we have been informed that the signature campaign has been gaining ground in those cities as well. Hence, this campaign is nationwide and not just constricted to a single city.
We are making all the efforts on our part, and if need be, we can produce those signatures to you, and to the authorities concerned to prove the strength vastness of our interest.
We would sincerely request you to look into the matter and help the entire student community by re-conducting the examination. This is not a request only from an individual. This request is from the entire student community across India. This is a call for justice and fairness in this democratic country. The future of more than 1 lakh students is at stake and, if we can say so, the future of India as well.
Yours sincerely,
Akhilesh Kumar Bajpai
(on behalf of all students)
DATE- 24th november
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