CAT goof up: Top B-schools express shock & anger; Begin admission review

NOIDA, India - June 25, 2013 - PRLog -- With IIMs admitting to have released tampered CAT scores for admission to non-IIMs for academic season 2013-15, top B-schools have expressed ‘shock’ and ‘anger’ over the development even as they initiated immediate action on admission review process for their new batches.

Terming the development as ‘unfortunate’ for B-schools, IMI Director General Dr Pritam Singh said that the tampering of CAT score sheet has not only harmed the admission process of B-schools but it has also breached the trust of B-schools and MBA Aspirants who believe in the authenticity of CAT scores beyond any doubt.

“It is highly unfortunate development. This is a sad affair and today the whole CAT process is under cloud and the entire system is in question now. This is definitely going to affect the credibility of the system,” Dr Singh said.

IIMs have admitted that CAT scorecards available officially to non-IIMs for admission year 2012-13 were ‘tampered’ with inflated scores of some candidates. According to IIMs, scorecards of as many as 80 testing IDs available on official CAT website have been found inflated as compared to the actual scores available with IIMs in the master datasheet of CAT 2012 scorecards. MBAUniverse.com was first to report on this on June 24, 2013. (http://www.mbauniverse.com/article/id/6981/IIMs-goof-up-o...)

Reacting on the CAT goof up, IMT Ghaziabad Director Dr Bibek Banerjee said that the discrepancies in CAT scores are a matter of great concern for all the B-schools. “It may have affected admission process of many B-schools. We are deeply concerned on how it unfolds,” he said.

BIMTECH Director Dr Harivansh Chaturvedi said, “We are deeply hurt and disturbed. IIMs can’t afford to be casual in releasing the CAT score data which decides the future of thousands of students.” He demanded a proper investigation into the matter.

IFIM Business School Secretary Mr Sanjay Padode said, “This comes as shocking news to IFIM.” He said “IIMs must have shown professionalism by properly communicating this message to their B-school partners who use CAT scores.”

IIMs, however, claimed that their admission process remains unaffected as they had used the master datasheet of CAT scorecards made available to them by CAT testing agency Prometric.

Admission review begins:

At the time of publishing this report, some B-schools had already initiated a review of their admission process conducted for the 2013-15 batch and begun identifying the admissions granted on inflated CAT scores. They said an appropriate action will be taken after completely cross-checking the facts.  

BIMTECH has identified one student who was given admission with his scorecard showing a CAT percentile of 97.05. “We will cancel this admission and also do the same for any other such cases that we may find,” said Dr Chaturvedi.

Dr Bibek Banerjee, Director, IMT Ghaziabad said, “We are reviewing our admission for the new batch. We have also initiated action in a few identified cased that may result in cancellation of some of the admissions.”

FMS Director Raj Dhankar said he will take stock of the situation and will take appropriate action.

Dr Pritam Singh said that IMI will convene a faculty council meeting where the next steps will be decided and appropriate action will be taken.

FORE School of Management Director Dr J K Das said, “We have taken cognizance of this matter and will definitely review our admission process for the new batch.”

IIM Tiruchirappalli Director Dr Prafulla Agnihotri said that the IIMs are not affected, but still the admission process will be cross-checked for admission based on any such data. “I think IIMs are unaffected. We will still look into it,” he said.

Meanwhile, the revelation on tampered CAT scores has also created a state of confusion among the B-school students and waitlisted candidates. MBAUniverse.com received many calls on what steps B-schools are taking on the already admitted students and whether the admission will be reopened for the waitlisted candidates.

Stay tuned to MBAUniverse.com for more updates on CAT 2012 goof-up.