Yesterday (3rd January) was a day loaded with confusions and speculations. The IIMs official website for CAT, catiim.in was apparently displaying CAT scorecards. The official declaration of CAT scores is scheduled on January 12, 2011.

The news media and social networking sites are flooded with the news on CAT 2010 results ‘leakage’. An aspirant on a social networking site commented, “I saw that too. But I doubt that its not correct...coz the total was of 450...I mean out of 450 the marks were there and we had 60 question, so in any case 450 can’t be possible…so dose results are fake.”

Another aspirant who claims to have viewed his scorecard says, “I am scoring 95.82 percentile. I followed the link somebody had posted and entered my details and got the scorecard which seems fake to me.”

The social networking sites are flooded with such comments following the news coming in highlight. Aspirants, who have been unable to view there scorecards, are panicking to know their scores.

An MBA preparation coaching institute, on its fan page on Facebook urged CAT aspirants not to panic and be patient before the result is announced on January 12. It said, “Kindly don't spread rumors and panic. Wait for official results by Prometric and IIMs. As of now anything else has no credibility!”

CAT convener and IIM Lucknow Professor, Prof Himanshu Rai said that there is no possibility that results could have leaked. Probably, the catiim admin might have been in the process of testing result node when certain aspirants landed on its page, discovering their result—may be, may not be, speculations has it all.

Prometric, when asked to comment on the issue, played safe and said, "The website hosting the results was developed, and is maintained, by a third party vendor hired by the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). Because we did not develop it, and do not manage it, we are not able to provide further information about the issues that affected the website. Prometric takes extensive security measures to protect our systems. The systems used to develop and deliver exam content are managed by Prometric and meet the highest security standards. The score reporting system is not developed or managed by Prometric."

The Indian print and electronic media have often been accused of sensationalizing news, however online media has been an exception so far. But it seems that the online media, especially certain MBA portals, have now joined the league, sensationalizing such issues by using terms like ‘leaked’, ‘hacked'.

The literal meaning of word ‘leak’ according to Oxford dictionary is ‘To escape or pass through a breach or flaw.’ However, a result is not as such a classified data by which any person can harm another neither was it obtained by a breach. Knowing it a week before or later is not going to make any difference to one’s chances of making it to the IIMs.