Now for the other side of the coin. CAT 2006 had 1 wrong question in quants and printing mistakes in one or two sets. A question in verbal is also purportedly wrong. This is not excusable. It was a godsend that i didn't have the set with the printing mistakes and i chose not to attempt the erroneous question, but what of the thousands who did. It was a couplet worth 8 marks and anyone who attempted it would have gone over it again and again on not finding the answer in the options. He/she could have spent close to 10 minutes on it for nothing. When 1.91 lakh students compete for 1200 odd seats, 10 minutes/8 marks is very very BIG!! It is indeed shameful that the IIM's CAT cell cannot set one error free question paper over a period of 1 year. The worst part of this fiasco is that, there is no judicious way in which this error can be compensated/rectified. Marks cannot be awarded to students who attempted the question. Many of those who got stuck with the question would ultimately chose to not attempt it in fear of losing a mark. They can't award 8 marks to all as it doesn't make any difference in an eliminative exam.
As a friend suggested, and i agree with him totally, the IIMs should increase the no: of GD/interview calls to include those students who would otherwise miss out because of this question. Of course, it won't bring justice to all, but its a fair thing to do.
Also, and this is very doable, there should be a new option given to the student to deal with erroneous questions. If a student feels that a question is wrong, he/she should be given the option to indicate that in his/her OMR sheet. Shading all the options for a question can be taken as an indication that the student has referred this question to be wrong. If, indeed it turns out to be wrong, full marks should be awarded to that student. However, if it is a valid question, he shouldn't be penalized for the same. A penalty for the same will again act as a deterrent and keep students from marking a question as wrong.
This, however, could create a scenario where a student choses to mark all the questions that are not attempted by him as wrong since he's not penalized for that.
To prevent that, a ceiling can be imposed on the number of questions that can be marked wrong...maybe 5. We can at least trust the IIMs to not have more than 5 questions wrong. If a student marks more, only the first five will be considered. Can't see any other loop hole at first sight. It seems pretty practical to me. What do u think?
Monday, November 20, 2006
CAT 2006...the fiasco continues
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Interesting read.
ReplyDeleteBut only stakeholders can appreciate.
i dont think thats a gr8 idea. its really impractical for more than a reason. one on the behalf of the student, marking a question wrong seems awkward. second, isnt this become inviting for the iim ppl to commit more mistakes. there are 2 things that can be done in case a student has done a question.
ReplyDelete1) As u said, or someone else did yesterday, more calls, double the number of calls to accomodate all the aspirants
2) all people above 90 %ile can be called for another exam. infact this is a practice that can be done all the time, it solves more than a purpose, as it can reduce the luck factor that is associated with CAT.
3) they should have not given the question paper.. cause in that case the question paper can be seen for the attempt that was done for the dubious question. I know its not a perfect technique, but can still go a long way in undoing the wrong.
am following the IIM's on this.. errata in my post : "there are 2 thing" to be corrected to "there are 3 things"
ReplyDelete@ varun
ReplyDeletei edited the post..so there's no confusion now :) never intended any to be
i don't think it encourages wrong questions. It's like a safety net for an acrobat.
Conducting another test is firstly, expensive and time consuming. Secondly, it is also susceptible to all the discussed flaws
they can keep the question paper. But i seriously doubt if they'd take the trouble of going through the scribbles for thousands of students
but yes, it can be done
Now can i sum up it as an I(inference), J(judgment) or a F(fact)???
ReplyDeletei got the code with the printing error n the wrong questions..
ReplyDeletemy sympathies :)
ReplyDelete