The days since the last weekend have seen a flurry of activity among Common Admissions Test (CAT) candidates trying to peep into what seemed like their CAT 2010 results. Many claimed to have got their CAT 2010 scorecards from the CAT website a good 10 days before January 12, 2011, the official date of CAT results. This has however terribly upset the authorities at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). Livid with candidates trying to pry open their CAT 2010 results ahead of time, CAT Convenor Prof Himanshu Rai told that it was very unethical of candidates to do so.

“This has shown them in a bad light as people. They are certainly not the kind of people IIMs would like to have in their institutes and definitely not the kind of leaders we are looking forward to make in the future,” Prof Rai said.

The CAT Convenor questioned the integrity of the candidates. “How is that you have not questioned the integrity of the students who claim to have seen their results in your article,”  he asked. “What sense does all this make when in a few days the results are going to be out for all to see. Why have candidates tried to check their results on the site when they are going to be officially declared only in some time?” he asked.

Sounding terribly disappointed with the candidates who tried to check their results and print their score cards, Prof Rai added however that he was not planning to take any action against any of them. He said that candidates trying to see their results was not a failure on his part or of the third-party vendor hired to look after the results, as is being claimed by media.

When asked whether the results were indeed the ‘actual’ results, the CAT Convenor said that he had no idea what the students had seen. “I cannot say whether they are the actual results or not as I have not checked what they have got,” he answered. He added however that while candidates may have got what they think are their scorecards, they have definitely not got their results and the results will be available only on January 12, 2011.

Previous incidents of b-school results being accessed prematurely have been treated in different ways. Following a similar incident during a day before the CAT 2004 results, the IIM Ahmedabad Director Prof Bakul Dholakia had conceded that “CAT results needed to be tested in a more secure environment.” His press statement had said,

“We will pay attention that the online testing before posting the results on the institute’s website is carried out in a secured manner to prevent any further leakage. From the next academic session we are planning to introduce unique links to our website address each year for viewing the results, which would be only available on the date of the formal announcement of results,” said Bakul Dholakia, director, IIM-A.

Which is opposite to the stand taken by Prof Rai this year for a similar mishap involving the same entrance test.

In a totally contrasting treatment of another such incident in 2005, top US b-schools Harvard Business School, MIT – Sloan and Tepper – Carnegie Mellon had blanket rejected over 120 applicants from across the world for accessing their admission results ahead of the day they were to be officially declared, viewing the action as ‘bad judgment’.

Asked about the claims of faulty questions that appeared in CAT 2010 (which was a hot topic of discussion among CAT exam takers during the testing window) Prof Rai said that the issue has been ‘settled psychometrically’. When asked specifically whether this meant that there indeed were ‘wrong’ questions, Prof Rai only reiterated his earlier point that the issue had been settled psychometrically.

Meanwhile, CAT candidates on our previous article have been fervently looking for trends in sectional attempts and corresponding percentiles by studying the ‘scorecards’ that were downloaded between January 2 and 3. While some candidates seemed content with their scores in the prematurely downloaded scorecards, some claimed that they anticipated better scores, while others claimed that they had not even attempted enough questions to net the percentile they had ‘got’.